Tom Regan’s Ethics:
- Animals and humans are all sentient beings with equal inherent value
- Humans should NOT view mice and rats as a readily available resource or profitable products for us to experiment on and abolish scientific use of them completely
In Reality:
–Currently impossible: Just as there is no such thing as true animal-free “vegan”
SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
1. The 3R’s
- Reduction: Minimizing number of research animals per study
(E.g. Apply multiple treatments onto one animal when possible; use the smallest sample size possible that still yields significant data) - Refinement: Modifying procedure or technique to ensure a better quality of life, reduce to an absolute minimum amount of pain, suffering, and distress imposed on research animals that are still used
(E.g. Add environmental enrichment, administrate analgesics and anesthetics, set earlier endpoints) - Replacement: Using less sentient animals such as invertebrates instead of vertebrates, substituting animal models with alternatives that can also produce scientifically satisfying experimental results.
Alternative Methods to Replace Research Animals
- Toxicity assays: replace conventional LD50 testing
- Ocular corrosion/irritancy in vitro assays: replace animals used in the Draize test
- Skin corrosion/irritation assays: replace animal testing; (require no animal cells at all, or need only a small section of skin (either rodents or humans)); increase scientific objectivity as well as provide greater relevance to human skin issues
- Local lymph node assay: beginning to substitute skin or contact sensitization testing on animals
- DNA microarrays coupled with cell and tissue culture: replace animals used in genomic research, especially in investigates that require genetic mutagenesis to express certain phenotypes,