Animal testing lobby Gircor does not like our report on primates

“Selected excerpts!”: this summarises the perspective on One Voice’s report of those who champion animal testing. Why talk about capturing, cages measuring two square metres in which the macaques spend their lives in laboratories, the disastrous position of France in Europe, or the fundamental problems linked with ‘ethical committees’? They are not even capable of naming One Voice. We should not advertise ourselves…

Forgotten strategies and misrepresentation

Our claims range from an obligation for transparency to helping countries who have met difficulties in cohabiting with macaques. We are also requesting, among other things, a reform on the norms for keeping primates and obligatory research into non-animal methods by laboratories. But amongst all of this, the animal testing lobby only mentions that which scares them the most: the request for a timeline for a complete exit from animal testing.

According to them, our report will encourage “dangerous theories, such as resorting to in humano methods as an alternative to animals”. In reality, the report states that it would be interesting, in addition to alternative routes, to develop clinical research “with the clear consent of supported human subjects… respecting an already well-framed bioethical consideration”. So not much to see. But fear is always a good motivation to justify the suffering that we inflict on others.

Even science is not their forte

In fact, even science does not seem to be these propagandists’ strong point: for them, “the development of ‘humans on a chip’ is more science fiction than science these days”. This is clearly not what the United States National Institute thinks since it has financed the Hesperos business since 2015, which has been proposing various versions of these ‘humans on a chip’ for years, which consist of connecting cell cultures using ‘microfluidic’ systems that reproduce the functions of the different organs in a human body.

But then, our adversaries ask, “should we not consider these ‘humans on a chip’ as sentient beings and therefore ask to ban all research on them?” — No. Incidentally, the French National Academy of Medicine [Académie nationale de médecine] has recently recalled that brain organoids are not mini-brains capable of thinking, but a variety of models that allow us to study different aspects of the brain. Perhaps by dint of advocating for animal testing, those responsible for propaganda in favour of animal testing have lost all capacity for imagination and for epistemological thinking. Or perhaps it is simply a matter of bad faith.

Who can still trust them?

As a matter of fact, the origins of Gircor as an “Interprofessional Group for Thinking and Communication on Research” does not quite fit with the impartial image that they want to give themselves nowadays. Its initial goal, much clearer than the public image it now displays, was to defend and promote “the interests of its members” – meaning laboratories and institutions that use animals.

We therefore understand why it strives to discourage the necessary and inevitable end of primates being used by these laboratories, and avoids spreading our claims, which no one could rationally find abusive.

You can help us

To help us to work towards an end to animal testing, you can sign our petition to demand that we stop using long-tailed macaques in France and Europe as well as the closure of the Silabe Centre at the University of Strasbourg.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice