How to do fewer, better animal experiments
FOR a nation of pet lovers, Britain conducts a surprising number of experiments on animals: some 3m a year. America appears to use fewer animals—just 1.1m a year, according to official statistics—but that is an illusion. Unlike Britain's government, America's does not think rats and mice worth counting. Japan and China have even less comprehensive data than America, and animals used in research in those two countries are not protected to the same extent that they are in the West. Even so, academic centres supporting alternatives to animal testing have emerged in both places in recent years. In July China issued its first set of guidelines governing the use of animals in research.
In an ideal world, there would be no animal testing. It is expensive and can be of dubious scientific value, since different species often react differently to the same procedure. That is why many researchers are working on ways of reducing the number of animal experiments needed and of making those that still happen more effective. However, the transition is proving easier for some types of experiment than for others, as a group of researchers in the field discussed at the sixth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, held last week in Tokyo.
The most important message from the congress was that things are going in the right direction. The number of animals used in experiments has fallen by half in the past 30 years, at least in those countries that record such things. There has also been a shift in the sort of animal used. Most of those employed today are rodents rather than dogs, cats, rabbits and monkeys. (That public opinion generally welcomes this is, however, a good example of “cutist” prejudice for one species over another: there is no reason to believe that rodents suffer less than other mammals.) Also, of the experiments that are still conducted, the majority are now concerned with developing and testing medicine rather than, say, checking how toxic cosmetics are. Of the 11m animals involved each year in experiments that have to be reported to the European Commission, about 45% are used for medical and veterinary purposes and another 35% for basic biomedical research (see chart).
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