Animal activists preventing cheaper Indian drugs: scientists

Monday, 06 January 2003, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Animal welfare activism has prevented Indian companies from producing cheap vaccines and thwarted biomedical research in the country, two of India's top scientists have said. S.K. Basu, director of the National Institute of Immunology (NII), and G. Padmanabhan, former director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), termed animal welfare activists as "anti-science" and "subverting human rights". The scientists said this while addressing the plenary session of the 90th Indian Science Congress on "emerging technologies in biosciences and genome research". "We can be leaders in vaccine technology, with the basic research done in India. But indigenous biomedical research is going to be a disaster in India with this unrealistic problem," said Padmanabhan, whose team is working on a DNA rabies vaccine for animals. India's indigenous work has helped reduce the cost of hepatitis 'B' vaccine. Vaccines for rotavirus, anthrax, HIV and malaria are all under development right now, with some reaching the stage of trial on animals. "(But) no meaningful experiments have been done for the last couple of years because activists do not want to implement the regulations governing use of animals in research. They are not interested in animal welfare. Otherwise, they would have cleared the import of mice for research," Basu said. "The result is that costly drugs from multinational companies will be the only ones available in the market at the cost of Indian companies which can otherwise produce vaccines based on indigenous research at cheaper prices," he told IANS. For instance, in the case of the DNA rabies vaccine, Indian efforts to test the vaccine on street dogs has been thwarted because the committee for the purpose of control and supervision of experiments in animals (CPCSEA) wants the experiments to be conducted on "beagle" dogs that have to be imported. "Importing is a time consuming process and this will delay further commercial production of the vaccine for rabies which kills thousands of animals in India. Ten times as many people are bitten by rabid animals," Padmanabhan said. "They are not interested in animal welfare. Otherwise, why would they prevent importing of transgenic animals for immunology research? By just not doing anything to clear the import proposals, India stands to lose in more ways than one," Basu said. Animals have to be used in biomedical research to find out how the systems function, Basu told the plenary session. "There is nothing immoral. Yes, animal research should be regulated. But what should be prevented is subversion of human rights by animal rights activists," he added. "India cannot afford to simply borrow technologies and pay more. We need science that is, indeed, creative. It needs much more investment and public funding," said Basu. Indian research has been affected since animal activists forcefully released 50 rhesus monkeys from the National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad. Since then the issue has gone through a long drawn battle of wits between animal activists and the scientific community over regulations governing the use of animals in research activities, impacting even changes in the union ministry. Even Asia's prestigious research institution, the IISc here, took the issue to the Karnataka high court when the CPCSEA stopped experiments on animals at its primate research lab. The projects that were affected cover the development of vaccines against malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, Japanese encephalitis and other diseases. The latest to take the issue to court is the National Institute of Immunology.
Source: IANS