A Scots Labour MEP has called for a total ban on the use of monkeys in medical research carried out in this country. David Martin said that a disproportionate level of tests involving primates were carried out in Scotland and that alternatives must be found.
A Scots Labour MEP has called for a total ban on the use of monkeys in medical research carried out in this country.
David Martin said that a disproportionate level of tests involving primates were carried out in Scotland and that alternatives must be found. The use of great apes, such as gorillas and orang-utans, in medical research has been illegal in the UK since 1986 but the EC wants to ban the practice, with a small number of exceptions.
Mr Martin said that Scotland should go one step further and rid laboratories of smaller monkeys, the most common used in research being marmosets and macaques. There are several research centres on the outskirts of Edinburgh which still use primates, he said.
Edinburgh University said that it did not have a licence to conduct such experiments but that it did carry out research using primates in conjunction with the Medical Research Council. Glasgow University said it had not used primates for research since the 1980s.
Mr Martin said that in the EC one in 10 experiments using primates was conducted in Scotland.
Professor Robert Millar, of the human reproductive sciences unit at the Medical Research Council in Edinburgh, said that primates were used there in research for medicines to treat male infertility, endemetriosis and prostate cancer. He said he did not agree that there should be a complete ban on primates in research laboratories. "There are lots of women's diseases for example that you need to have a menstruating species to show that the drug will be effective. Only primates are a menstruating species."
