World Lab Animal Week, which ends tomorrow, is usually a festival of anti-vivisectionist propaganda. This year it was also the occasion of my first opportunity to see a working animal research facility laboratory for myself.

In the space of a brief visit to the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) lab in Harlow, Essex, it was impossible to witness the full range of experiments done in Britain. But it was sufficient to demolish several myths that the animal rights lobby has been pushing this week.

From the harrowing images that plaster high street protesters’ trestle tables, it is easy to assume that lab animals are kept in cramped and grimy prisons. Yet among the first things you notice in Harlow are the spotlessness and the space. Large cages have material for climbing and nesting, which is changed daily for hygiene. Lighting, temperature, noise and humidity are controlled. The more social rats and guinea- pigs are housed in groups whenever the experiment s permit. These rodents are kept in rather better conditions than are many pets.

This attention to detail puts paid to another anti- vivisectionist canard: that animals are used in drug development to save money. They are actually one of the most expensive elements in the process, as the highly trained technicians who look after their welfare, and perform experiments, do not come cheap. Neither do the facilities or the military operation that keeps them clean. Elsewhere in the GSK lab, computer models and cell cultures are used extensively to cut costs and improve accuracy. Animal models are the pricy option, used only when nothing else will do.

Then there is the idea that lab animals live in constant distress. Some of those I saw were indeed being used in ways that had potential to cause pain. It was discomfiting to see guinea-pigs with tubes inserted into their skulls, so that drugs can be infused directly into the brain, and to witness an operation in which this was being done to a rat. Yet the animals showed no obvious signs of suffering. Their inquisitive, playful behaviour was impossible to distinguish from that of stock animals to whom nothing had been done. The rats I saw having surgery were anaesthetised, and sedated in recovery.

It is, of course, wrong to say that no animals suffer during experiments. But it’s naive to imagine that they feel constant fear and misery as a self-aware human would.

This experience has left me more convinced than ever that scientists who use animals responsibly have nothing to be ashamed of. The public can understand, and even respect, what they do if they are open about it. And there are welcome signs that the research community is starting to realise this, at least when it comes to talking.

This week 116 universities and companies declared their support for properly regulated animal research, and the Pro-Test group in Oxford has drawn thousands to march in support of the university’s biomedical lab. Institutions could do more, though, to show off what they do: many are still too nervous about letting the media in. Transparency is the best antidote they have to the spin of their opponents.

Mark Henderson is the Times science correspondent

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