ATLA::Alternatives to Laboratory Animals

Volume 24, Number 2

The Three Rs in research and education: a long road ahead in the United States.

ATLA 24, 151-158, March/April 1996

F. Barbara Orlans

Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 20057, USA

SUMMARY

Attitudes toward the Three Rs concept of refinement, reduction and replacement in the United States in research and education are widely divergent. Positive responses have come from several sources, notably from four centres established to disseminate information about alternatives. Funding sources to support work in the Three Rs have proliferated. The activities of institutional oversight committees have resulted in the nationwide implementation of important refinements. In the field of education, student projects involving pain or death for sentient animals have declined, and the right of students to object to participation in animal experiments on ethical grounds has been widely established. However, there is still a long way to go.

Resistance to alternatives is deep-seated within several of the scientific disciplines most closely associated with animal research. The response of the National Institutes of Health to potentially important Congressional directives on the Three Rs has been unsatisfactory. The prestigious National Association of Biology Teachers, which at first endorsed the use of alternatives in education, later rescinded this policy, because of opposition to it. An impediment to progress is the extreme polarization of viewpoints between the biomedical community and the animal protectionists.

Keywords: Three Rs, alternatives, National Institutes of Health, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees, animals in education, computerized literature searches