The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines vivisection as 'painful treatment of living animals for the purposes of scientific research.' Suffering can be physical or mental and this is acknowledged by the government, since its statistics of animal experiments refer to procedures 'likely to cause... pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm'.

During 1994, over 2 million (2,842,361) such experiments were performed in British laboratories. An additional large but unknown number of animals are also used, but not for live experimentation: they are killed so that parts of their bodies may be used for research.

Every year the Home Office, the government department with responsibility for regulating animal experiments, publishes its Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals. This document lists the main categories of experiments and the number and species of animals used. (Animal Aid produces an analysis of these figures, published in Outrage.)

The total number of animals (2,772,758 in 1994) is slightly less than the number of experiments since some animals are used in more than one experiment. In recent years the overall number of procedures has been gradually declining; the annual 1987 total, for instance, was 3,631,393. However, in 1994 there was actually an increase of 14,616 animal experiments-about 0.5% more than the previous year.

The main species are rats and mice but large numbers of other animals are also used. Most of the animals are specially bred for research by commercial breeders.

Animals are used to test the safety of a wide range of products, including drugs and medical appliances (human and veterinary), pesticides, household and industrial chemicals, food additives, and cosmetics and toiletries.

Animals are widely employed in physiological research to see how the body works, and in medical research in an attempt to identify and develop new treatments (e.g. drugs and transplants) and to understand disease and its progression. Animals are also used for weapons research, in psychology and behavioural experiments, and for producing biological products such as antibodies and sera.

By its very nature, vivisection is virtually inseparable from suffering or death. This is partly to do with the experimenter's desire for a disposable species that can be manipulated as required and killed when convenient. It also arises from the way in which many tests are performed.

In the field of toxicology (safety assessment), which accounts for about 20% of animal experiments, dose levels are often chosen to induce harmful effects. For instance, in prolonged safety tests with new drugs, the highest dose levels are chosen to produce adverse effects so that doctors supposedly have some idea which body systems need special monitoring during human trials. In 'lethal toxicity tests' the animals are deliberately poisoned to death to measure toxicity: 116,493 such experiments were performed in 1994.

Another major area where animals are deliberately harmed is the study of illness and injury. Here the condition is artificially induced to produce an 'animal model'. In cancer research, for instance, the UK's leading charities acknowledge that 'animals with local or disseminated tumours are likely to experience pain and/or distress. [Source: UK Co-ordinating Committee on Cancer Research Guidelines for the Welfare of Animals in Experimental Neoplasia (UKCCCR, July,1988)].

A recent development is the use of biotechnology to breed animals that automatically become ill. The 'oncomouse', produced by inserting human cancer genes into the embryos of mice, quickly develops fatal breast cancer, whilst 'cystic fibrosis mice' die within 40 days. Animals may also suffer from the way they are kept or through poor experimental technique. At London's National Institute for Medical Research, recently videotaped evidence revealed how inadequate anaesthesia caused a rabbit to struggle in pain. And with wild-caught monkeys, the number who die during capture and transportation far exceeds the total who survive the journey to the laboratory.

In most experiments, animals who are not killed by the procedure are killed at the end of it.

Many of the techniques and devices used by animal researchers are more suited to a torture chamber than a twentieth century laboratory.

For instance, pain responses during drug research are often measured by putting animals onto hot plates, by dipping their tails into hot water and by the 'mouse writhing test', in which acetic acid is injected into the animal's stomach. Stress is induced by forcing animals to swim in a tank of water, and to produce the desired response in behavioural experiments, researchers use food deprivation or drugs.

Electric shocks, flashing lights, loud noises and chemicals are used to produce epileptic fits in animals, whilst formalin is used to induce a 'model' of persistent pain. In laboratory rats, glycerol is employed to produce kidney failure and carbon tetrachloride to induce liver cirrhosis. In toxicity tests, animals are poisoned to death or forced to breathe suspect fumes in specially designed inhalation chambers. Their eyes are stitched closed or surgically removed during vision experiments. They are addicted to drugs, and potential irritants are applied to their skin or eyes.

Potentially painful experiments are regulated by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which frequently refers to 'protected' animals. However, if the public were to subject animals to similar 'experiments' they would be prosecuted under general anti-cruelty laws (the Protection of Animals Act 1911), for causing unnecessary suffering.

Scientists are immune from prosecution because they have licences issued under the 1986 Act by the Home Office. In other words, they (the scientists), not the animals, are protected by legislation and permitted to cause pain and suffering.

The 1986 Act requires that researchers give consideration to alternatives in their application for a licence. These submissions are generally assessed by nineteen Home Office inspectors who regulate and monitor the nearly 16,000 scientists who hold personal licences. However, Animal Aid has identified many cases where humane, non-animal research techniques have simply been ignored (see Animal Aid's Altar of Science report).

According to the Home Office statistics, 338 establishments were licensed to perform animal experiments in 1994. Most experiments are conducted by commercial laboratories (52% in 1994), or by universities and medical schools (29%). The remainder are carried out by public health laboratories, NHS hospitals, government departments, other public bodies and non-profit making organisations.

Animal experiments are funded by a bewildering variety of organisations. These are companies, government departments, medical and other charities, research councils paid for by the taxpayer such as the Medical Research Council, and health authorities. Animal Aid produces a list of medical charities which either sponsor or avoid animal research.

Most people who oppose vivisection do so on moral grounds because they object to the inflicting of pain, suffering and death on innocent creatures who have no prospect of individual benefit and who cannot give their consent. Under these circumstances people would object to similar treatment of human beings, and the same principles apply to (non-human) animals.

There are also powerful scientific arguments against vivisection since humans and animals often vary in their response to drugs and disease-reliance on animal experiments can therefore be seriously misleading. Common treatments found in the family medicine cupboard, such as aspirin and paracetamol, are highly poisonous to cats.

In contrast, many drugs which seemed safe in animals have been withdrawn or restricted in their use following dangerous side-effects in people. Examples include aminorex, benoxaprofen, chloremphenicol, phenylbutazone, practolol, prenylamine, suprofen, tycrynafen and zimelidine. [Source: Science on Trial by Robert Sharpe, hard copy available from Animal Aid]. Overall, there is only a 5-25% correlation between harmful drug effects in people and the results of animal experiments. [Source: R. Heywood in Animal Toxicity Studies: Their Relevance for Man, eds. C. E. Lumley & S. R. Walker (Quay Publishing, 1990)].