Are national academies in favour of the forced swimming test?
Behind a facade that was intended to be reassuring, public authorities have internally reacted to our campaign against forced swimming for rodents… By going to look for excuses for this test at the Académie nationale de médecine [National Academy of Medicine] and the Académie vétérinaire de France [French Veterinary Academy]. The result: a deplorable article published in one of these prestigious institutions’ bulletins. You can sign our petition to ask for an end to this farce.
In October 2022, the animal testing team at the ministry started discussing the subject of the forced swimming test with “academies”, highlighted in France by our campaign that was launched last year. A few months later, these exchanges resulted in sufficient opinions to say to the CNEA [National Commission for the Protection of Animals used for Scientific Purposes] “that it is not appropriate to… do away with [the forced swimming test] because it is a scientific necessity.”
Have academies really given a reasoned “opinion”?
Not having been able to find any trace of these opinions on the academies’ websites, One Voice wrote to them to find out if this document really existed. A few weeks later, we had an explanation:
«A group of experts from our academies have actually worked on this subject. This work resulted in an article being published in the ‘Académie Vétérinaire de France [French Veterinary Academy] Bulletin’. It was not an opinion.»
The article in question, whose title does not mention forced swimming, was published in May 2023. Signed by two researchers and two veterinarians involved in animal testing, with two and a half pages and a sparse bibliography, it is a sorry sight.
A few unwarranted statements do not make a scientific article
Generally, a scientific publication is not expected to make “lofty” claims. If we say that a test is great, or even simply that it is useful, we must be able to prove it by referring to reliable studies which have analysed the subject. Without this, we can hardly even claim the much less glorious status of an “opinion paper”.
And that is indeed the case here. Out of nine bibliographical references, only two scientific articles specifically relate to the forced swimming test. And while these pieces of writing by specialists are unfavourable here and advocate for the use of other methods, the “group of experts” from academies preferred to put blind trust in associations promoting animal testing who “support its use as a valuable tool” to find new medications…
Help us to get the forced swimming test banned
We ask ourselves how such an obviously biased opinion piece could have been published. But the worst thing is that a national commission specifically dedicated to protecting animals exploited by laboratories trusted these comments to the point of saying that they would allow “a formal response on the content and the interests of the test.”
The public must not be fooled by these sleights of hand. To help us put a stop to forced swimming, you can sign our petition.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice