India gradually moving towards biomedical research sans animals

In what could be a clear indication that the Indian government is gradually moving towards biomedical research sans animals, the National Medical Commission (NMC), the regulatory body which regulates medical education and medical professionals in the country, has recently issued guidelines recommending the use of several non-animal teaching and training methods and no longer make certain routine laboratory experiments on animals mandatory. The Commission grants recognition of medical qualifications, gives accreditation to medical schools, grants registration to medical practitioners, and monitors medical practice and assesses the medical infrastructure in India.

According to the new guidelines issued by the Commission, pharmacology students are now required to learn how to administer drugs by various routes and study the effects of drugs using simulation (computational models), replacing the use of rabbits, rats, and guinea pigs as per previous guidelines. For some tests, such as studying drugs affecting memory and brain-coordinated movements, the guidelines recommended the use of human volunteers. For experiments in which drugs or chemicals are rubbed into animals' eyes or animals are deliberately infected with diseases, the new guidelines recommended using human-relevant in vitro and simulation models instead of using animals. For practical examinations, the guidelines suggested demonstrating the effects of drugs and interpreting their results in humans instead of using other animals. The new guidelines also now recommended that students display knowledge about the utility of computer assisted learning.

The NMC, which replaced the Medical Council of India in 2020, issued the new guidelines following a major campaign by the animal rights organization, the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and others. In its letters to the NMC, PETA India pointed out that several studies by Indian medical schools confirm that non-animal methods are effective at meeting learning objectives, facilitate repeatability of the experiment, improve students' comprehension of experimental concepts, enhance their retention capacity, and bypass many other issues encountered when experimenting on animals.

PETA India also shared opportunities to replace animal tests with sophisticated, non-animal methods in the guidelines for teaching and training postgraduate pharmacology students. As per the new guidelines, animals are no longer used for undergraduate medical education in India. Thanks to the NMC's new guidelines, much of postgraduate teaching and training will also no longer involve applying chemicals to animals' skin or eyes or forcing them to inhale toxic fumes, deliberately infecting them with diseases, or mutilating them, after which they would often be killed by suffocation or neck dislocation.

Obviously, the new guidelines, issued for its postgraduate pharmacology curriculum, will spare the lives of countless animals nationwide. There are no two opinions about the fact that a large number of monkeys, dogs, rats, and other animals are mutilated, burnt, blinded, cut open, poisoned, and drugged in research laboratories of the pharmaceutical companies every year. Although the Indian government does not publicly disclose the annual number of animals used in experiments, more than a million scientific procedures were estimated to have been conducted in 2015, representing a more than 20 per cent increase over the last 10 years. It is true that during the last several years, there have been controversies in the world on the issue of the role of animal experimentation in drug discovery.

Millions of animal are routinely used every year in laboratories around the world to test the safety and efficacy of drugs for humans. All conventional drugs are tested on animals at some point as this is required by regulators and in many countries by legislation. It is also true that virtually all major medical advances for both humans and animals have been achieved through bio-medical research by using animal models.

But, the animal welfare group PETA wanted to revamp biomedical research and regulatory testing in India to phase out animal experiments in pharmaceutical research. The supporters of animal welfare, euphemistically termed as animal activists, are of the view that most of the drug discoveries are possible without experimentations in animals and inflicting cruelty on them. Many monkeys, dogs, rats, and other animals are mutilated, burnt, blinded, cut open, poisoned, and drugged in laboratories every year. They argue that not only are these tests cruel, their results are also inapplicable to humans because of the vast physiological differences among species. The NMC's latest guideline is a clear indication that the Indian government is gradually moving towards biomedical research without animals.

(The author is freelance journalist with varied experience in different fields)