The Use of Animals in Research

Abstract

The Use of Laboratory Animals in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, the report of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) has now been released. 1 was on the committee that authored the report and fully concur with it as far as it went. It is no mean task to agree on reasonable and comprehensible standards for the humane treatment of animals in research. Nonetheless, in my view, there is something missing: the committee slighted what I believe is the most important practical aspect of the issue of “animal rights”—the political dimension. Biomedical research is now under serious political attack from a variety of organizations and individuals who, for ideological reasons, desire to stop or drastically reduce the use of animals in experimentation, and they are willing to use virtually any tactics to achieve this goal. They rarely state this aim, or pursue it directly, perhaps because this would lead to an open discussion of all the benefits and costs involved in biomedical research. Rather, the activists concentrate on a series of restrictive measures, seemingly less radical, each of which makes the use of animals more expensive and more burdensome—chipping away bit by bit at our ability to afford animal research.