 The concerns of scientists for animals first became visible professionally by 1950s,
when the belief that animals do not suffer as much as we do came under attack.
British zoologist William M. S. Russell and microbiologist Rex L. Burch published 'The
Principles of Humane Experimental Technique, in which they put forth the Three Rs.(1)
According to the definition of the Three Rs, investigators must aim at replacing animals,
reducing the number of animals required and reducing the amount of stress imposed on the
animals through suitable refinements in the techniques used in research. This was the onset
of an emerging debate intended to change experimental methodologies involving animals.
These methodologies were widely accepted by the scientific community and erected as a paradigm that is still difficult to uproot today.
Many scientists would not prefer to use animals in their research. For many of those engaged actively in research, it is not worth taking the extra effort to switch to other methods, all the more that funding is little available to research on Alternatives.
Funding agencies such as
the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) pay research and developement of alternatives a lip service, compared to the traditional animal research they actively promote through constant and generous funding.
Currently, developing alternatives requires at one stage some animal-based studies to validate
a new method excluding the use of animals. The response of federal funding agencies is generally this one: as an experimenter, if you have something new, test it on animals otherwise your chance to get funding are close to nil. The dollars will go primarily to those researchers using animal models to validate their findings.
Most common alternatives are clinical studies, in vitro research on human tissue, autopsies, epidemiology, computerized and mathematical modeling, genetic research, diagnostic imaging, post-marketing surveillance and prevention. Alternatives are human-based methods to understand and treat human diseases.
The combination of different strategies foster the reduction, the replacement and the refinement of experiments and provide a more accurate and precise understanding of human diseases.
Obstacles to the acceptance of alternatives in toxicological studies include the validation
process that aims at replacing the old accepted method by a new and unproven one. In order to be
accepted an alternative must go through various stages of evaluation that Michael Balls Former
Director of the European Center for the Validation of Alternatives Methods (ECVAM) enumerates
as:
1) Scientific validation primarily concerned with assessing the reproducibility of the new
test.
2) Political validation, which requires the participation of different national
laboratories to harmonize acceptance.
3) Commercial validation, which would allow the
creation and marketing of a test.
4) Screening/Adjunct validation, which aims to get
toxicologists used to alternatives.
5) Replacement validation, which aims to convince
the legislators that the alternative is as reliable as the currently accepted test.
6) In house validation, when companies have their own tests but results are usually not
published and not peer-reviewed.
7) Public relations validation conducted on behalf of
industrial companies to convince their critics while animal testing continues.
8) Pole vault validation to overcome the reaction of people having vested interests in the
continuation of animal testing who set impossible criteria for acceptance of alternatives that
they are not familiar with. (2)
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