Ethics of Research involving animals
The development of the pharmaceutical industry
8.2 The modern pharmaceutical industry has its origins in the chemical industry of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. A first peak of research activity concerned the development of treatments for war injuries and infectious diseases arising from mass migrations during and after the First World War. During the Second World War and subsequently, a much more systematic approach to the discovery of new medicines led to a significant increase in both medical discovery2 and industrial activity.3
8.3 Early pharmaceutical research drew on existing animal models that were used in experimental physiology, extending established scientific traditions of using animals in research. New potential medicines were not directed at a specific target such as a cell receptor, as they are today. Rather, the effect of medicines was measured in relation to the general physiological response of an animal, such as changes in blood pressure. This method of screening for potentially beneficial effects of medicines used large numbers of animals, and was inefficient and cumbersome. As pharmaceutical research expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, the use of animals expanded in parallel. In the 1980s, novel techniques, improved facilities, computer technology and new materials became available and were integrated into the research and development process. The use of alternatives to solely animal-based research and development, such as cultured cells, also expanded.
8.4 From the late 1980s these developments continued to transform pharmaceutical research and development. Information technology became more efficient, allowing the integration of rapidly expanding amounts of data generated by advances in basic biological knowledge. This information was integrated with data from new technologies such as high-throughput chemistry and biology, genomics, pharmacogenetics, advanced diagnostic imaging and the application of bioinformatics. Since the 1980s, the continued expansion of pharmaceutical research in the UK has also been accompanied by the increasing use of a wide range of modern methods, which we describe below (see Figure 8.1).4 The use of these methods was one factor that contributed to the decrease in animals involved in commercial research during the same period, from 60 percent (or 2.1 million) of the total number of procedures in 1987, to 36 percent (or 1 million) of the total in 2003.5
Figure 8.1: The industrialisation of drug discovery
1 See World Health Organization (2003) State of the Art of New Vaccines: Research and development (Geneva: WHO), available
at: http://www.who.int/vaccine_research/documents/en/stateofart_excler.pdf. Accessed on: 29 Apr 2005.
2 HistoryWorld Combined Medical Timeline (Wellcome Trust), available at:
http://www.historyworld.net/timelines/timeline.asp?from=existing&D=1925&selection=&tid=yocb&title=Combined%20Medical%
20Timeline&back=existing.asp. Accessed on: 26 Apr 2005.
3 Corley TAB (1999/2000) The British Pharmaceutical Industry Since 1851, available at:
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/Econ/Econ/workingpapers/emdp404.pdf. Accessed on: 26 Apr 2005.