The geneticist Lluís Montoliu, in an archive image.Inés Poveda
The president of the Ethics Committee of the CSIC, the geneticist Lluís Montoliu (Barcelona, 57 years old), assures that what has hurt the most when seeing the images of abuse in the Vivotecnia laboratory has been the lack of respect with which they treated the animals that were experimented on.
This researcher argues that there are times when there is no choice but to cause damage to other species, but assures that what was discovered in this company located in Tres Cantos (Madrid) is completely extraordinary.
The images of animal abuse in Vivotecnia were recorded by an ex-worker who had notified her bosses
The Environmental Prosecutor's Office opens an investigation for the alleged animal abuse in the Vivotecnia laboratory
Question.
What do you think of the video that has uncovered this case of animal abuse in Vivotecnia?
Answer.
These types of videos are always despicable.
In this case, I have been working in animal experimentation for more than 30 years and I have not been able to finish seeing it.
It contains poorly performed procedures and gratuitous animal abuse, but what bothered and angered me the most was the lack of empathy and people's comments.
It is a privilege to be able to work with animals and we have to accept it.
That lack of respect that the images convey seems to me the worst.
Q.
Is this case really that exceptional?
R.
It is very exceptional in Spain and around the world.
Animal experimentation is highly regulated and for these images to occur, a whole series of failures in the system have to concur.
For experimentation you have to ask for permission and it must be carried out by people who have their training, it is like our driving license to be able to use animals.
And then there are other people who must control what is done.
There is an open investigation, but for me what this video shows is a lack of supervision.
I can work in a laboratory with students or technicians, but I am responsible for what they do.
In this case, the company, middle managers and managers are ultimately responsible.
Q.
Wouldn't there also be very harsh images if you put a camera in any other laboratory that experiments with animals?
R.
Animal testing procedures, all of them, have to be detailed, reviewed by various ethics committees and authorized.
If you put a camera in an operating room when they are operating on a person, you are going to see a series of things that can shock people.
In a heart operation they have to open the thorax, it is something brutal that cardiovascular surgeons do daily and they are not pleasant images to see, although lives are saved thanks to this.
I am not telling you that we only caress animals, but the possible harm done to them is justified if the benefit to be obtained is greater.
This is the dogma when we evaluate all these procedures.
With the updating of the animal experimentation regulations, the procedures [to which they are subjected] can be mild, moderate, severe or without recovery.
The higher the severity of the procedure, the more justification the investigator has to provide in order to perform it.
An example that I explain in my classes: when we have pain, we are grateful that there are drugs such as Nolotil and others of this type, but to investigate new analgesics, an experiment must be carried out in which you have the possibility of transmitting pain to an animal .
It is the only way to verify if when administering the experimental drug that pain is no longer perceived.
Q.
A lot of animal testing has been done for covid vaccines, hasn't it?
R.
All the speed that human clinical trials have gone has been because huge amounts of money have been invested, but each and every one of the vaccines had to be validated before not in one, but in different animal models.
They were first validated in mice (which require a small genetic modification to be infected by this coronavirus), also in hamsters (which do become infected) and, finally, in those most similar to us, which are primates. Macaque species in which the Pfizer, Moderna, Astrazeneca, Janssen, Sputnik vaccines have been validated ... Those that are being developed in Spain are now also being tested in non-human primates.
Without animal testing, we would now have no covid vaccines.
Montoliu shows one of the mice with which he works to the Valencian journalist and actress Patty Bonet.Alvaro Garcia
Q.
Today there are alternatives to reduce animal testing.
A.
If you go to the COSCE [Confederation of Scientific Societies of Spain] transparency page on animal experimentation, you will see that from 2009 to 2019 there has been a decrease of approximately 40% in animal experiments.
We are in about 800,000 annual uses of animals, the vast majority are rodents, and of them, the vast majority, mice.
When a researcher proposes an investigation with animals, he has to justify that there is no alternative method that allows him to obtain conclusions compatible with the experiment he wants to carry out.
If they exist, it is not debatable, you are required by law to use the alternative method.
In many toxicology evaluations, there are now alternative assays in cell models, organoids, or cell colonies that no longer require animals.
But I who work with rare diseases and visual impairment, because we still do not have a system that allows me to use something that is not a living being.
The same with vaccines or with the development of antitumor drugs.
Q.
How does the CSIC work with the Vivotecnia laboratory?
R.
Vivotecnia is a company, a CRO [Contract Research Organization], which has two types of activities.
One is that of animal experimentation for third parties, which has been temporarily suspended by the Community of Madrid, but it is also a service company that provides animal facility personnel to many other centers, the CSIC and other institutions.
There are many CSIC centers that have staff that is outsourced to this company, this is not being investigated or suspended, and we have a contract in force.
At the CSIC we support open research and we will act accordingly to the conclusions.
It will be decided if the contract is renewed or what has to be decided.
Q.
When a researcher experiments with animals, can he at the same time empathize with them?
A.
This is very important and in the laboratory we are very aware.
There are people here who are responsible for the different mouse colonies with which we are investigating and they treat them with a… —I was going to say honey, but still the humanization of these things is not adequate— with the utmost respect.
All the mice are known, every day they comb them, they check them, cage by cage.
A well-done science is also one that gives good results.
A badly done science can never give good results.
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