The disgusting research practice known as the animal forced swim test came a step closer to being abolished in the UK, as more labs withdraw support for it – not least thanks to PETA.
PETA: successfully campaigning against the forced swim test
Following campaigning from animal rights group PETA, three independent medical research funding bodies – BMA Foundation, Medical Research Scotland, and the Dunhill Medical Trust – committed to not funding any future experiments that use the cruel and scientifically debunked forced swim test, paving the way for animal-free science.
In the widely discredited test, experimenters force rats, mice, or other small animals into inescapable beakers of water and watch them desperately swim in search of an escape under the erroneous belief that this can reveal something about human mental health conditions. Once the test is complete, experimenters kill the animals.
The Home Office recently announced that it was immediately ending the use of the scientifically flawed test as a model of human depression or for studies of anxiety and its treatment and that it intends to eliminate it in the UK entirely in the near future.
This came after significant lobbying from PETA and other animal rights groups. As the Canary previously reported, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council recently acknowledged that the procedure has a significant adverse impact on animals.
The council announced that the test must not be used in new projects for modelling human depression or anxiety, the treatment of these conditions, nor other reasons without compelling justification. Those currently using the forced swim test must conduct a review of their project within three months.
‘Cruel and bad science’
PETA senior science policy manager Dr Julia Baines said:
Forcing terrified animals to swim for their lives is both cruel and bad science, and sensible funding bodies rightly don’t want to waste critical time and money on tests that do nothing to advance human medicine.
PETA applauds the many institutions that have dropped this appalling test and urges shameful holdouts like the University of Bristol to follow suit.
Leading institutions – including the universities of Brighton, Exeter, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, and Southampton as well as King’s College London, Newcastle University, and many major pharmaceutical companies – have indicated they neither use the forced swim test nor intend to do so in the future, making those that continue to use the cruel test, including the University of Bristol, outliers.
Featured image via PETA
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This is a very cruel and misleading article. I don’t think those research bodies ever used the forced swim test. You may as well campaign for McDonalds to ‘stop’ serving dog meat. I mean, they’ll probably agree to not selling it right? Forced swim is quite a rare test. It involves mice and rats swimming about for about 5 minutes in swimming-pool temperature water before they’re removed, dried and returned to their cage. Every antidepressant that works in humans invokes longer swimming times from the animals before they float instead of swimming – they float naturally and don’t nearly drown. It’s never been a model for depression, but is a good screen for things likely to help depressed people. The Home Office review found that there were no alternative methods that could be used instead and was quite balanced, but the methoid definitely isn’t ‘scientifically discredited’ and it’s extremely callous to suggest otherwise https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advice-on-the-use-of-the-forced-swim-test/advice-on-use-of-the-forced-swim-test-accessible . In a world where about a 1/3 rd of depressed people don’t respond to any therapy – not currenmt drugs nor walks in the woods – and their risk of suicide is 20x greater than the general population. I’m not sure any of this is a ‘victory’. Refusing to let a rat go for a 5 minute swim seems like the least we should be doing.