© Photo: pixabay
The use of laboratory animals has been controversial for years. Yet science continues to do so, even though there are good alternatives. Why is animal testing so entrenched in scientific research? Director of Proefdiervrij Debby Weijers and head of the 3R’s Center Utrecht Jeffrey Bajramovic provide answers.
“In the Netherlands alone, we conduct around 450,000 animal tests every year on mice, zebrafish and monkeys, among others,” says Weijers. “Despite major developments in animal-free methods, this number has remained more or less the same over the last ten to fifteen years.”
Breeding organs
To test, among other things, the influence of diseases and the effectiveness of medicines, scientists can grow human cells and even make mini organs. Something that animals were used for until recently. For example, Nature recently published a study on the influence of hepatitis E on a cultured human liver.
“With the use of human cells, you no longer have to make the translation between humans and animals,” says Bajramovic. “The effect of medicines or the influence of a disease on an animal can be very different than on a human. In addition, working with a colony of cells is often faster than with a laboratory animal.”
Animal methods bias
Despite the advantages of animal-free methods, there remains a deep-rooted preference for animal testing within science, purely because researchers are used to this. This animal methods bias results in a vicious circle where studies involving animal testing are published sooner and scientists therefore more easily receive funding for further animal research.
Yet Weijers and Bajramovic see the first cracks in this vicious circle. “We increasingly see animal-free research being published in major magazines,” says Weijers. But for significantly less animal testing, there must first be a fundamental change in science.
