National Anti-Vivisection Society

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The National Anti-Vivisection Society, (NAVS) is a national, not-for-profit animal welfare organization based in London whose purpose is to eliminate product testing, education and biomedical research on animals.

It was the world’s first organisation campaigning against animal experiments having been founded in 1875 by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, a great humanitarian who published many leaflets and articles opposing animal experiments, and gathered the support of many notable people.

In 2009 the NAVS and its animal and environmental group, Animal Defenders International, are now leading the lobbying on the revision of the European Directive on animal experiments, seeking the first ban on the use of primates in research. 55% of the European Parliament has voted to end the use of primates in research, but the pharmaceutical industry has launched a gigantic lobbying effort. Arguments by the pro-vivisectionists have included that a ban on primates would send research abroad and that jobs would be lost.

History

The NAVS of the UK is the world’s first anti-vivisection organisation, founded in 1875 by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, a humanitarian who published many leaflets and articles opposing animal experiments, and gathered many notable people of the day to support our cause. Early supporters of the NAVS included Queen Victoria and Lord Shaftesbury. Many of the social reformers of the day, working for children's rights and women's rights, supported the aims of the NAVS.

The Society was formed on 2 December 1875 in Victoria Street, London, under the name of the Victoria Street Society. At the time there were about 300 experiments on animals each year. Public opposition to vivisection led the Government to appoint the First Royal Commission on Vivisection in July 1875; it reported its findings on 8 January 1876, recommending that special legislation be enacted to control vivisection. This led to the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, which reached the statute book on 15 August 1876. This Act remained in force for 110 years, until it was replaced by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986.

The Cruelty to Animals Act 1876 legalised vivisection, as well as providing total secrecy to the vivisectors and to the laboratories, with no public accountability. The Home Office awarded licences to vivisectors in secret, the locations of laboratories were secret. No access was allowed, for any reason - whether Member of Parliament, media, public, or local authority - all were barred. And so, the numbers of animals used as well as the number of licences awarded rose year on year for a century, protected by successive governments and a silent scientific community.

However, opposition to vivisection also increased, and the Victoria Street Society grew in strength and influence and after a few years changed its name to the National Anti-Vivisection Society (6 October 1897).

The NAVS’ founder Miss Frances Power Cobbe

From the outset the Victoria Street Society had demanded the total abolition of vivisection and whilst this has always been, and remains the prime objective of the NAVS, at a Council meeting on 9 February 1898 the following resolution was passed:-

The resolution was carried by 29 votes to 23. Miss Cobbe did not approve of this as she did not want the Society to promote any measure short of abolition. As a result, after the Resolution was passed, Miss Cobbe left the NAVS and formed the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection to demand total and immediate abolition of animal experiments. This resolution of 1898 has remained the policy of the NAVS until this day.

Brown Dog affair

In 1906, a statue was erected in Battersea Park of the small brown terrier dog, one of the animals which featured in the journals of the undercover investigators, as he was vivisected at the University of London. The inscription on the statue reads:

The statue became the target of animal researchers and London University medical students; students rioted at the site; anti-vivisectionists defended their statue; the elderly Frances Power Cobbe was attacked in her office. After years of conflict, the statue mysteriously disappeared in 1910.

The NAVS and others erected a new statue with the same inscription in 1985, again in Battersea Park, where it remains today.

Second Royal Commission on Vivisection

In 1906 the Government appointed the Second Royal Commission on Vivisection. This Second Royal Commission heard a great deal of evidence from the NAVS and other interested parties. It published its findings in 1912, recommending an increase in the numbers of Home Office Inspectors; further limitations with regard to the use of curare (paralysing drug which does not deaden pain, but can heighten it); stricter provisions as to the definition and practice of pithing; additional restrictions regulating the painless destruction of animals which show signs of suffering after experimentation; a change in the method of selecting, and in the constitution of, the advisory body of the Secretary of State*; and keeping of special records by vivisectors. (*This body, under the new 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, is called the Animal Procedures Committee).

This was a long way from abolition; it did not deal with the issue of secrecy and public accountability; it left the vivisection community protected from outside control and scrutiny. Although each successive Home Secretary attached ‘pain conditions’ to all experiments, the ‘conditions’ were so worded that they afforded no protection to the animals whatsoever.

The NAVS strongly believes and can demonstrate that there are good scientific arguments against the use of animals in research, not least because of the misleading results from animal experiments, due to species differences. Thus, for animal research to be abolished would, in fact, be in the public interest. However, to pursue such a case would be prohibitively expensive.

In 1963, with animal experiments running into millions each year and a public deprived of information on the issue, the Government set up a ‘Departmental Committee on Experiments on Living Animals’ to consider the use of animals in research, and whether any changes in legislation were necessary. In 1965 the Littlewood Committee, as it was known, published 83 recommendations, and although none of the recommendations were designed to bring an end to animal experiments, no legislation was passed to put any of them into effect anyway.

Throughout the 20th Century, the NAVS lobbied government and drafted various Bills against a seemingly unstoppable rise in animal experiments ‘reaching almost 6 million per year in the UK by the 1970s’. When the trade in monkeys for use in vaccine tests devastated India’s population of rhesus macaques, NAVS representatives went to India and successfully lobbied for a ban on the export of these animals, which was introduced in 1978.

In 1973, the NAVS, now based in Harley Street, London, sought a new strategy and founded the Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research. The Fund was named after Lord Dowding, the Air Chief Marshal and Battle of Britain WW2 hero. After the war, Lord Dowding became President of the NAVS and in the House of Lords made many impassioned speeches on animal experiments. His wife Lady Dowding was also an NAVS Council member (later becoming President after her husband’s death).

This new strategy was to make positive steps to replace the use of animals in research, and to show that animal research is not necessary for medical and scientific progress. The Lord Dowding Fund continues to be responsible for ground breaking medical and scientific research that does not involve animals. Tens of thousands of animals have been saved, through the introduction of techniques and technology funded by the Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research.

In 1979, the NAVS established World Day for Laboratory Animals (also referred to as Lab Animal Day) on April 24th - Lord Dowding’s birthday. This international day of commemoration is recognised by the United Nations, and is now marked annually by anti-vivisectionists on every continent.

The modern movement

After years of lobbying, in 1983, the Government announced it would replace the 1876 Act and published a White Paper. The NAVS was bitterly disappointed with the weakness of the proposals. However, the Society decided to take a very reasonable approach to the issue, realising that abolition was not achievable. Thus, together with other UK groups such as BUAV, Animal Aid and the Scottish Society, a list of key experiments and purposes was forged that should be banned under new legislation.

The coalition of groups of which NAVS was part, called for a ban on the use of animals in tests for cosmetics, tobacco, alcohol products; warfare experiments; psychological and behavioural tests; a ban on the LD50 poisoning test and the Draize eye irritancy test, as well as other measures in relation to the administration of the legislation (such as reform of the Home Secretary’s Advisory Committee). After a hard fought campaign, the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act received Royal Assent on 20 May 1986.

It would not be until the late 1990s that a change of Government brought in bans on the use of animals for cosmetics research and a ban on the use of great apes would start the process of change. These were followed by the UK's Freedom of Information Act, which has slowly changed the culture of secrecy. However, there is still no full public access to information.

In 1990 the fast-expanding Society had long outgrown its premises in Harley Street, and so moved to larger premises in Goldhawk Road, London. After 17 years, the shape of its campaigning had changed to meet the changes of the new millennium; so in 2006 NAVS moved to Millbank Tower, London, where it remains today.

Mission

NAVS claim is that they strive to educate researchers, physicians, manufacturers, teachers and government leaders in the discovery of new, humane methods that will save millions of animals each year and still give our children a safer, healthier and happier future.

References

External links

• National Anti-Vivisection Society website