Understanding Animal Research | Latest News

25
MAR

3Rs in front of the camera

Posted by Cat under blog's category : Animal welfare & alternatives

If there is one thing that anti-vivisection campaigns are good at, it's providing vivid imagery. Unfortunately, the striking images they use can often be inaccurate, out of date, or obtained from countries where animal welfare takes very low priority. That's why at Understanding Animal Research, we think it's important to set the record straight, and provide images and video that show what animal facilities really look like.

Bad design or bad reporting?

Posted by Emu under blog's category : Animal welfare & alternatives

Critiques of animal research usually focus on issues such as the need for the study, the number of animals used, and how they are treated. Equally important, but often overlooked, are issues such as whether the experiment is properly designed, and whether the results are properly analysed and communicated.

In December 2009 the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research authored a paper in PLoS One reviewing experimental design and reporting of research involving animals.

40,000 trout undercut costs, increase accuracy

Posted by Zebedee under blog's category : Animal welfare & alternatives

The largest animal study ever on the cancer-causing risk (carcinogenicity) of chemicals could have profound implications for the species used in such testing, the numbers of animals used, and the accuracy of current tests. Scientists at Oregon State University found that acceptable levels of at least one carcinogen may be 500 to 1,500 times higher than currently believed. They also showed that using thousands of trout may give more accurate results than a hundred laboratory rats in assessing the risk of some chemicals.

Currently, to assess real-world risks of exposure at low levels over a long time, high doses of chemicals are tested over a much shorter period in rats. There have always been concerns about the accuracy of data obtained in this way, but the methodology has been dictated largely by costs and logistics. The new study, using trout, shows that traditional methods may overestimate actual risks by a factor of 1,000 for a class of toxins called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), although it also shows that current tests for others called aflatoxins may be more accurate.