Good News for Mice and Rats! Creative Biolabs Drops Cruel Forced Swim Test
Is the near-drowning test on animals nearly history? After hearing from PETA US, life sciences company Creative Biolabs has cast aside the cruel and worthless forced swim test. The company confirmed that it will remove the test from its service platform and no longer offer or perform it, noting that the test is “no longer relevant for drug development efforts.”
Creative Biolabs joins a long list of leading institutions – including the universities of Bath, Bristol and King’s College London, and many major pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sage Therapeutics, AstraZeneca, and Novo Nordisk A/S – that have indicated they neither use the forced swim test nor intend to do so in the future.
What is the Forced Swim Test?
This experiment induces panic in small animals by placing them into inescapable cylinders of water. The animals attempt to climb the steep sides of the container and even dive underwater, desperate to find a means of escape.
Once the test is complete, experimenters kill the animals – either by gassing, blunt force trauma to the head, an overdose of anaesthetic, or breaking their necks – to study their brains.
Criticised by the Scientific Community
The scientific community has long criticised the test. The Home Office recently announced its intention to eliminate all uses of the experiment, which would be the first time a specific test on rodents has been banned in the country. This highlights how invalid and cruel it is.
What You Can Do
This move is a great step towards ending experiments on animals. Please join PETA in helping end more cruel tests. Urge the government to mandate an end to all experiments on animals in the UK:
