fdfdAround half the diseases in the world have no treatment.

Understanding how the body works and

how diseases progress, and finding cures, vaccines or treatments, can take many years of painstaking
work using a wide range of research techniques. There is overwhelming scientific consensus worldwide
that some research using animals is still essential for medical progress.

Animal research in the UK is strictly regulated. For more details on the regulations governing research
using animals, go to the UK regulations page.

mouse being handled

Mouse being handled

Credit: OU

Why is animal research necessary?

There is overwhelming scientific consensus worldwide that some animals are still needed in order to
make medical progress.

Where animals are used in research projects, they are used as part of a range of scientific techniques.
These might include human trials, computer modelling, cell culture, statistical techniques, and others.
Animals are only used for parts of research where no other techniques can deliver the answer.

A living body is an extraordinarily complex system. You cannot reproduce a beating heart in a test tube
or a stroke on a computer. While we know a lot about how a living body works, there is an enormous
amount we simply don’t know: the interaction between all the different parts of a living system, from
molecules to cells to systems like respiration and circulation, is incredibly complex. Even if we knew how
every element worked and interacted with every other element, which we are a long way from
understanding, a computer hasn’t been invented that has the power to reproduce all of those complex
interactions - while clearly you cannot reproduce them all in a test tube.

While humans are used extensively in Oxford research, there are some things which it is ethically
unacceptable to use humans for. There are also variables which you can control in a mouse (like diet,
housing, clean air, humidity, temperature, and genetic makeup) that you could not control in human
subjects.
Is it morally right to use animals for research?

Most people believe that in order to achieve medical progress that will save and improve lives, perhaps
millions of lives, limited and very strictly regulated animal use is justified. That belief is reflected in the
law, which allows for animal research only under specific circumstances, and which sets out strict
regulations on the use and care of animals. It is right that this continues to be something society
discusses and debates, but there has to be an understanding that without animals we can only make
very limited progress against diseases like cancer, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and HIV.

It’s worth noting that animal research benefits animals too: more than half the drugs used by vets were
developed originally for human medicine.

Aren’t animals too different from humans to tell us anything useful?

No. Just by being very complex living, moving organisms they share a huge amount of similarities with
humans. Humans and other animals have much more in common than they have differences. Mice share
over 90% of their genes with humans. A mouse has the same organs as a human, in the same places,
doing the same things. Most of their basic chemistry, cell structure and bodily organisation are the same
as ours. Fish and tadpoles share enough characteristics with humans to make them very useful in
research. Even flies and worms are used in research extensively and have led to research breakthroughs
(though these species are not regulated by the Home Office and are not in the Biomedical Sciences
Building).

What does research using animals actually involve?

The sorts of procedures research animals undergo vary, depending on the research. Breeding a
genetically modified mouse counts as a procedure and this represents a large proportion of all
procedures carried out. So does having an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan, something which is
painless and which humans undergo for health checks. In some circumstances, being trained to go
through a maze or being trained at a computer game also counts as a procedure. Taking blood or
receiving medication are minor procedures that many species of animal can be trained to do voluntarily
for a food reward. Surgery accounts for only a small minority of procedures. All of these are examples of
procedures that go on in Oxford's Biomedical Sciences Building.

Mouse pups
Mouse pups

Credit: PA Photocall

How many animals are used?

Figures for 2022 show numbers of animals that completed procedures, as declared to the Home Office
using their five categories for the severity of the procedure.

Severity

Mice

Rats

Ferrets

Guinea Pigs

Domestic fowl

NHPs#

Pigs

Other rodents

Other birds

Xenopus

Zebrafish

Other fish

Total

Non-recovery

1449

403
8

42

18

1929

Mild

29906
118

13

20

58

38

1159

31317
Moderate

30969

181

4447

0
35614

Severe

1587

18

0
735

334

2674

Sub-threshold

136809

118

0
0

1083

138010

Total

200720

838

14

55

9
28

58

38

7442

334

209544

# NHPs - Non Human Primates

* Badgers are caught, tagged and released for monitoring in the wild as part the work of the Wildlife
Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU).

Oxford also maintains breeding colonies to provide animals for use in experiments, reducing the need for
unnecessary transportation of animals.

Figures for 2017 show numbers of animals bred for procedures that were killed or died without being
used in procedures:

Total excluding those involved in creation or maintenance of a GA line

Genetically normal animals killed as a result of creation of a new GA line

All animals (other than previously reported) killed for the maintenance of established GA lines
Total

Mice

8851

2000

23721

34572

Rats

762

762

Xenopus

59

0
59

Zebrafish

384

384

Why must primates be used?

Primates account for under half of one per cent (0.5%) of all animals housed in the Biomedical Sciences
Building. They are only used where no other species can deliver the research answer, and we continually
seek ways to replace primates with lower orders of animal, to reduce numbers used, and to refine their
housing conditions and research procedures to maximise welfare.

However, there are elements of research that can only be carried out using primates because their brains
are closer to human brains than mice or rats. They are used at Oxford in vital research into brain diseases
like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Some are used in studies to develop vaccines for HIV and other major
infections