AstraZeneca

Operation summery:
AstraZeneca is planning to build a £330m HQ, R&D and animal torture lab in the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. NOAV intends to use all lawful means to prevent them from doing so!

Target’s Profile:
AstraZeneca plc is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company.In 2013 the AstraZeneca used 260,930 animals in-house and commissioned other labs to test on a further 19,676 animals! According to the company’s own website 91% of the animals used in 2013 were rodents, 8% were fish and the remaining 1% included primates, dogs, rabbits, ferrets, chickens, pigs, and sheep.

AstraZeneca is infamous for the stroke drug NXY-059 which worked in animals but did not in humans. The failure prompted Janet Woodcock, deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration to comment; “There’s no doubt about the absence of an effect [of NYX-059], and that called into question the many other studies in stroke, and how good are the animal models?” She went on to say “So many agents appeared to be effective in the animal model and failed in human trials.”

Cases study:
Primate experiment carried out for AstraZeneca

A small tube was inserted into the leg vein of 16 monkeys where it remained so that they could be dosed with an experimental asthma drug. Each day for 14 days, the animals received an intravenous injection (despite that it was intended that the drug should be inhaled by humans). The animals were then killed.

The monkeys were deprived of food and water, and had to endure human handling, and discomfort due to the procedures themselves. For urine collection the monkeys were deprived of food and water overnight, and deprived of food overnight prior to blood sampling.

They experienced a range of symptoms including diarrhoea, swelling in the stomach, redness of feet and hands, white pigmentation on the feet; the males’ testes increased in weight and they suffered red and swollen penises and scrota. The monkeys were reported to be subdued and hunched on their perches; body tremors were seen in one; another did not use its right leg throughout the test, apparently due to “an injury”; females suffered abdominal and umbilical hernias. All of the monkeys lost weight; both food consumption and heart rate fell.

Control animals (which were not given the experimental drug) were noted to have suffered from diahorrea, indicating that the animals were not in good health or were neglected.

The experimental drug was intended for inhalation administration for the treatment of
asthma. However, the drug was given to the monkeys directly into the bloodstream, through the catheter into the leg vein. Yet it was already known that a similar asthma drug developed by AstraZeneca gave different results after administration by intravenous infusion compared with administration by inhalation.

In short, even if you believe animal experiments can give data applicable to humans (they can’t see the Science section) this test was carried out so badly that it couldn’t. Monkey’s lives taken for nothing!

Time to get angry and active:

The Cambridge Site (location, maps and details of the site AstraZeneca are building on!)
Secondary Targets (AstraZeneca couldn’t build it without these guys!)
AstraZeneca UK Locations (Find your local AstraZeneca and go protest!)
Planning Application (AstraZeneca can’t build it without final planning permission!)