How would you feel if you were an animal caged for scientific testing?

With animal experiments on the increase, we enter Britain’s secret labs to put the scientists’ rationale to the test
Wearing my own clothes, I am in a room stocked with 7,000 tiny fish. The clothes are a relief after a morning spent in paper underpants, pyjamas, zip-up boiler suit, overshoes, hairnet and mask. If animal laboratories are the “hellholes” depicted by rights activists, then this is a peculiarly sterile vision of hell. Heaven forbid that I should introduce an earthly bacterium to the unit’s transgenic mice. Even my spectacles had to be left at the door.

Unfortunately, I cannot say where I am. The risk of violence means I can identify the location only as “a large university in the Midlands”.

I have arrived via a primate-breeding establishment further south (location secret) and Satan’s own hellhole, Huntingdon Life Sciences (location known to all), whose staff — “monsters” in the language of protest — have been punished for their crimes with firebombs and baseball bats.

In the course of a month-long investigation, I have seen experiments on monkeys, dogs, pigs, rodents and fish. Many times over I have heard hopeful news for cancer, Parkinson’s and dementia sufferers. I have heard bad news for makers of salty snacks and fizzy drinks, and endless confirmation that the scientific and ethical dilemmas of medical research are seldom simple. World experts on neuroscience and pharmacology have patiently explained the breakthroughs they are working towards, but always on condition of anonymity. In one lab I had to surrender my watch in case it concealed a camera. At the Medical Research Council’s (MRC’s) breeding centre for macaques I was photographed, had my passport copied and was not allowed to move without an escort. At Huntingdon my car was searched.

But never mind. I was in, and face to face with the monsters of vivisection.

Monkeys are the poster boys of the anti-vivisection movement. Their resemblance to humans makes them, in a few particular circumstances, the best subjects for experiment, but at the same time it makes them the most controversial. All you need to get protesters onto the street is a photograph of a monkey gripping the bars of a cage or, better still, strapped to an apparatus with wires coming out of its head. The favoured species in the UK are macaques, which universities obtain from the MRC. It is dangerous to attribute human emotions — happy, sad, depressed — to other species, but at the breeding unit the temptation is impossible to resist. As far as I can see, these are happy monkeys, secure in their identities and comfortable with handlers who know them by name.

The building is modern, airy and light. Our arrival in the glass-topped service corridor is met by a cacophony of squeaks, like a race between rusty wheelbarrows. In fact, the source is a row of mirrors, one outside each glass-fronted room, which can be adjusted from within by turning a handle. The monkeys simply want to see who’s coming. Inside each “free-roaming room” is a colony of a dozen or so macaques, from alpha males to suckling infants. Instead of trees they have an aerial jungle of climbing frames, swings and play equipment.

It all looks believably natural. Mothers groom their babies. Youngsters race through the branches of the surrogate trees. Alpha males never let anyone forget who’s boss. They have an enviable diet. The fruit in the cold store looks as if it might have come straight from Waitrose. There are fresh eggs (they like them hard-boiled) and a muesli of grains and seeds. All this is scattered for them to forage among the straw and wood shavings on the floor. Sitting among them and feeding them party treats — digestive biscuits, popcorn and Ribena — was a joyful, life-affirming experience. And yet…

There are hints that this five-star mini-resort has a darker side, and that all this luxury will have to be paid for. Each animal has its name tattooed across its chest, with the initial letter indicating the year of its birth. This year (2009) it’s T, so here are Tim, Tallulah, Titan, Toots and Tigger. There are 237 monkeys in all. Some will be kept for breeding. The rest will be taken from here to institutions where their living brains and bodies will be used in research. Some will improve our knowledge of infection; some will help prevent blindness; many more will be used in neuroscience. Knowing this, it is hard to enjoy the party without a pang of guilt.

Typically they will be immobilised by a surgically implanted “head-post”. Electrodes will then be planted inside their skulls to monitor their brain activity while they perform a range of tasks involving memory, learning or physical dexterity. Drugs may be used to stimulate or inhibit particular kinds of behaviour, and parts of the brain may be removed. Some of them will suffer strokes. None of this is easy to think about, never mind look at.

For medical science, the aim is a better understanding of the brain, and especially of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and dementia. That is the human benefit. It is hard to know how much the monkeys suffer. Controversy haunts the official grading system — mild, moderate, substantial — that the Home Office uses to categorise pain. Under this mechanism, removing part of a monkey’s skull and delving into its brain is merely “moderate”. Many experienced observers, not just animal-rights campaigners, think that “substantial” — a category requiring intense ethical scrutiny, and defined as likely to cause a “major departure from the animal’s usual state of health and wellbeing” — would be nearer the mark. A House of Lords committee spoke for many in 2002 when it described the system as “highly misleading”. Even so, scientists argue that British laboratories are the most tightly regulated in the world. Each one has to be licensed. So does every researcher, and every procedure the researcher performs. No experiment is (or should be) allowed if there is a non-animal alternative. Some people still think this is not enough. For them, experiments like this are too distressing ever to be justified. Others see a moral imperative in attacking human disease. Wet-lettuce liberals like me see agonising dilemmas.

After visiting the macaques I talked to Mark Davies, a 45-year-old former mechanical fitter who lives with his dog in Worcester. Mark has had Parkinson’s disease quite severely for 15 years, but can function near-normally thanks to a technique known as deep brain stimulation, which was pioneered in monkeys. Electrodes in the affected part of the brain are connected to a tiny generator under the skin near the collarbone. It is similar to a heart pacemaker, sending tiny electrical currents, which in some patients reduces physical tremor and restores control of the limbs. Before the operation Mark’s life was, to use his own word, “awful”. “I couldn’t walk or talk,” he says. “It felt as if I was getting worse every day. It is a horrible, horrible disease.” After deep brain stimulation his hands are mostly “as good as anyone else’s”. He can pour tea, trim his nails. “Parkinson’s has actually enhanced my life,” he says. “I do more now than I did before.” He has taken up kayaking and cycling, and climbed Mount Snowdon. “The only thing I’ve not been allowed to do is skydive.”

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