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Charity in plea to Prostrakan over drug tests on animals
A MAJOR animal welfare charity has urged Borders-based pharmaceutical company Prostrakan to back its campaign calling for a halt to the use of animals when testing new drug products.
The plea came from Animal Aid, which wants governments to crack down on drug industry practices that it claims put profits before all else.
In its new report, entitled 'Making a Killing: How drug company greed harms people and animals', it claims to expose a catalogue of unethical practices – beginning with misleading animal tests – that are designed to drive up drug sales, which already cost the NHS 11billion per year.
Animal Aid says it is also the public's health which suffers, with one million people in 2006 being hospitalised in Britain due to adverse drug reactions.
Citing more than 400 references, the report paints a disturbing picture of what Animal Aid alleges is a morally bankrupt industry that has run out of control and one in which some 600,000 animals pay with their lives each year in the cause of pharmaceutical research.
ProStrakan is a fast-growing speciality pharmaceutical company concentrating on the development and commercialisation of prescription medicines. It employs around 200 people at its headquarters in Galashiels and other premises throughout the rest of the UK and Europe, and has been touted as a real Borders success story.
The firm's website says it has a broad research and development portfolio, covering the whole range of work from early research right through clinical trials and on to registration and marketing.
The website also states that ProStrakan's primary strength is in its multidisciplinary staff of about 30 professionals in research and development, trained throughout Europe and the United States, whose expertise covers all aspects of research and development.
The development function is based at its Galashiels HQ, where it is currently developing products to help treat a wide range of conditions, including cancer and the side effects of chemotherapy.
However, Animal Aid director Andrew Tyler says drug development results in the painful death of around 650,000 animals every year in British laboratories.
"It is a grotesque deceit for the industry to pretend that a rat or a dog can tell us whether a new drug product is safe and beneficial for people to take," said Mr Tyler.
"Animals are the first victims of this system, but people suffer too from sometimes lethal side effects not predicted by the animals tests.
"Prostrakan is among the businesses that commission tests using animals. Arguing that government obliges it to use animals is dishonest and feeble. In fact, the relevant European Directive states that animals should not be used where viable alternatives exist. And non-animal methods do exist.
"All that's stopping them being comprehensively employed is an attachment to the old familiar and convenient methods. If pressed by the pharmaceutical industry, the regulators would abandon the requirement to use animals and impose a non-animal testing regime.
"The industry doesn't press government because it's content with the status quo. Nonetheless, there are ethical and forward-looking members of the biomedical community.”
Mr Tyler added: “Prostrakan should join with them in calling for a testing regime that is ethical and scientifically valid.”
In response, a Prostrakan spokesperson told TheSouthern that the pharmaceutical industry is regulated by government agencies and international guidelines that define the testing requirements for new drugs prior to their use on humans.
“This regulation means that brand new medicines for human use – i.e. those that have not been used in man before – require animal studies as part of the overall research programme to help establish their safety profile.
“ProStrakan’s portfolio is focused on development rather than research. We specialise in developing new uses for, and presentations of, already-approved drugs. As such, these drugs will have already undergone safety studies in animals by other companies. Depending on the new way the drug is to be used, either no additional testing or minimal additional testing in animals may be required.
“If needed, such studies are conducted by specialist companies and within strict guidelines laid down by regulators. ProStrakan does not carry out animal testing itself and has no laboratories at any of its facilities in the UK or overseas.” The spokesman added that ProStrakan has not had the opportunity to study in detail the report just published by Animal Aid and therefore had no comment to offer on its content.
For its part, Animal Aid is now calling on the British and European governments to introduce a series of measures, including commissioning an independent scientific review into the reliability of animal tests; enforcing a fairer pricing system for drugs; shelving EU plans to allow direct drugs promotion to the public; and ensuring that drug companies do not conceal vital testing data from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
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