© Bill Parry 2002

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.47.22

It’s easy to be a victim. But it’s extremely difficult not to be one, and Laura Cowell has been doing this for as long as she can remember. Laura is attractive, precocious and articulate, and at first seems like your typical 16 year old. But Laura has cystic fibrosis (CF), a congenital disease that mainly affects the lungs, pancreas and intestines, and which strikes one in 2000 newborns. With the complications that accompany it through life, Laura can expect to live to be 30, and will likely require a lung and heart transplant to help her reach that young age. She is also diabetic.

I first met Laura at a launch of publications by the Research Defence Society (RDS), an organisation that supports the humane use of animal experimentation for medical research. Laura, who was there as ‘the patient’, was one of several participants who was present to put an individual and human perspective on this volatile issue. Nervously, she told the audience ‘If it wasn’t for medical research, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. I owe my life to the researchers and animals. That’s why I’m here today.’

Now in her home in Devon, and much more at ease, she tells me about her current infatuation with the electric guitar, and her hopes to play in a band with her friends. ‘I’m trying to learn some Nirvana tunes. I like Muse, too.’ Trying to relate, I ask about the Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead. ‘Oh ya, they’re great, too.’

Laura is taking media and film studies at a local college and relishes every aspect. Her favourite directors? She smiles. Kubrick, Guy Ritchie, and Tarantino. When I ask why she wants to be a radio or TV presenter, she briefly looks to the air for the answer: ‘To get my point across. You often only hear one side of the story, and that’s often misinformed.’

Which is why I’m here. To get her side, and why she has accepted the personal risk involved in supporting humane animal experimentation. I am one of many who have come to hear her side, a list that has recently included the BBC (whom she first started working with when she was six), a number of broadsheets and the Evening Standard.

What strikes me about their home is how normal it seems. Is. No signs of Laura’s condition. Her childhood was characterised by pills, injections, inhalers, drips, doctors and hospital stays. At 10, Laura spent two months in hospital on antibiotics to improve her lung function. As soon as she had regained her strength, she had her appendix and gall bladder removed. By this age she’d had more medical attention than most of us ever experience. Then, two years later, she was diagnosed with diabetes.

I ask her when she was first aware of her condition. ‘I don’t remember a day of not having medicine. It’s always been with me. I’ve grown up with it. I learnt to understand it as I got older.’

Most 16 year olds endure a number of daily ordeals which, to them, are a matter of life and death – spots, love and break-ups, hormone-swamped angst, parents who just don’t understand. Yet Laura, on top of these, endures a regime of medication that really is a matter of life or death. Each day she takes between 40 to 60 pills, two insulin injections and two nebulisers (heavy-duty inhalers that dispense antibiotics).

Laura may be a victim of her genes, but she certainly has no time to feel victimised. When I ask in what ways her condition limits her day-to-day routine, she promptly and determinedly replies: ‘It fits into my life, and not the other way round. It fits into what I’m doing.’

Her mental approach is more positivity than bravado, however. ‘I’ll have to keep an eye on my alcohol and insulin,’ she admits, ‘but otherwise it doesn’t really affect me on a daily basis.’

She also has to take more care in winter, when she’s more susceptible, which, she says, requires a daily IV drip of antibiotics. She impassively indicates the mark in her arm.

Since the age of six, Laura has been in the media spotlight, doing her bit for CF research whenever she could. Her mother, Vicky, pulls out a photo album of Laura. Not your typical family photo album: this one shows Laura at different ages with a different mouthful of teeth, always smiling brightly with various television casts and presenters and world renowned specialists in the CF field.

Her participation in the production of the RDS’s new publications is just the latest effort. These are intended to correct misinformation about animal experimentation in medical research and to show the public a factual, human, and humane side to the research – the side which struggles against the grisly, inhumane and outdated (or foreign?) images and fallacious information ‘the Antis’ (anti-vivisectionists) use in their high street displays and websites.

Several of the participants in the publications withheld their names for fear of being targeted by extremists. Is she concerned about possible attacks? She is unequivocal in her reply: ‘No, not at all. It’s worth it.’ Not at all? ‘Being the patient, I can’t see how–’. She begins again: ‘I can see how the researchers might be worried, but not the patient.’

Yet her mother, Vicky, Chair of Seriously Ill for Medical Research (SIMR), wouldn’t give me their address via email, just in case. And Andrew Blake, founder of SIMR and their close friend, has CCTV at his home. Andrew gets round in a wheelchair. Laura concludes: ‘If it happened it would be quite a shock. But it’s getting an important point across, so it’s worth it.’

As her condition is part of her life, she has made discussing animal experimentation a part of her life, too. Amongst her friends and in RE and science lesson debates, Laura has informed teachers and classmates of her dependence on animal experimentation – and their dependence too.

Does she have any moral qualms about humane animal experimentation? ‘No, it hasn’t troubled me. I’m not mean,’ she says emphatically. Looking at Safka, their aged dog, she says, ‘I don’t hate animals; I’m an animal lover.’ (She insists I note that Safka receives anti-arthritis medication, which was derived from animal experimentation – as is half the medication prescribed for animals, according to the RDS publications.)

Has she been to a lab to see it for herself? She has, and she was ‘pleased’ – a word she qualifies – with what she saw. ‘Everyone was very friendly, very caring. I was pleased with the treatment I saw there.’ She adds that anti-vivisectionists should be allowed to visit labs: ‘I think they’d be quite surprised.’

Like all of us, Laura would rather that animals weren’t required for medical research, but accepts it for the benefits it brings us. She asks a fundamental question: ‘When it comes down to it, would they [‘the Antis’] take the odd painkiller? Or deny their children antibiotics? I don’t think so.’ (Incidentally, non-animal studies account for 90% of all medical research in the UK.)

Laura feels that ‘programmes on TV with debates are the best way to address the issue, to get the facts out’. She would also like to write for HOPE, the magazine of SIMR, featuring interviews with researchers who visit schools to discuss why humane animal experimentation is still necessary. She would like to visit schools herself, if possible, to express her point of view and experience.

Laura’s media studies beckon. She’s got to devise a four-minute opening sequence for a suspense short. I leave her, certain that she will continue to fight for what enables her to fight. More than CF, it’s in her genes.