Take action - contact Cancer Research UK

Nude Mouse CC BY-NC 2.0 Daniel Parks Animal Aid has previously revealed CRUK’s financial support for animal research. Our latest exposé highlights how researchers who acknowledged ‘generous financial support’ from CRUK, conducted cruel and outdated experiments on a number of nude mice, in order to give them bone cancer. The animals, some 6 weeks old and others 16 weeks old, had cancer cells injected into their hearts. The male mice received prostate cancer cells and the female mice received breast cancer cells. These cells were made to glow so that tumour growth could be identified while the animals were alive. The animals were killed at various times after the injection into their hearts.

The type of mice subjected to these procedures have been described in another paper as having many health problems such as heart problems and eye problems – including where the edges of the eyelids become inflamed and where abscesses form around the eyes. These poor animals also suffer from age-related hearing loss.

Please contact Sir Harpal Kumar, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, to object to the disturbing experiments that it is has supported.

Sir

Harpal

Kumar

Cancer Research UK

Dear Sir Harpal

I was shocked and saddened to learn that CRUK provided ‘generous financial support’ to cruel and outdated animal experiments (Wang et al - DOI 10.1186/s13046-015-0240-8), which were conducted on nude mice, in order to give them bone cancer.

The animals, some 6 weeks old and others 16 weeks old, had cancer cells injected into their hearts. The male mice received prostate cancer cells and the female mice received breast cancer cells. These cells were made to glow so that tumour growth could be identified while the animals were alive. (This was also confirmed after their deaths.) The animals were killed at various time points after the injection into their hearts; the method of killing is not stated.

As well as causing terrible animal suffering, the methods used in the research are crude and outdated. The researchers themselves acknowledge the difference between their ‘animal model’ and cancer in humans: ‘the administration of a single high dose of cancer cells via intracardiac injection only partially mirrors seeding events in humans where low numbers of cancer cells are released into the circulation over prolonged time intervals.’ In these experiments, the males were injected with approximately 100,000 cancer cells and the females with approximately 75,000 cells in one injection.

Unfortunately, your current policy of supporting and conducting animal research means that I do not feel able to donate to you. But if this changes – so that only humane and productive non-animal research receives support – then I will be very happy to reconsider.

Yours sincerely,
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EXPOSING AND CHALLENGING CHARITY-FUNDED VIVISECTION

Take action - contact Cancer Research UK