Based on the concept of the “Three R’s” refinement, reduction, and replacement many alternatives to the use of animals have already been developed and are in use every day in research labs around the world. This is science at work. The modern search for alternatives to the use of live animals in scientific research and to reduce the pain endured by research animals began in 1959 with the publication of The Principles of Humane Experimental Techniques by the British scientists W.M.S. Russell and R.I. Burch. Today there is an international consensus within the biological research community to accelerate the search for scientifically valid alternative research methods. Research companies in the United States and around the world are spending millions of dollars in the scientific quest for new research methods.
Properly understood, these “alternatives” mean somewhat different
things but they all involve improving scientific techniques. Some
refine tests so that animal distress or pain is decreased to the absolute
minimum necessary to answer the research question. Some reduce the number of animals used in a specific test. Some replace, whenever possible, animal with non-animal experiments. Take
as an example the so-called Draize test, in which new chemicals
and compounds are instilled into rabbit eyes to confirm non-toxicity
and a lack of irritation. The Three R’s efforts to refine, reduce,
and replace this test have already yielded real results:
Scientists have refined such animal eye research so that Draize
tests are no longer performed on live animals using very acidic
or very alkaline substances already known to be highly irritating
to the eye.
Moreover, the numbers of animals required per test have been reduced from as many as 12 animals per substance to just three or fewer, as the result of the development of many preliminary in vitro tests, including tissue cultures for eye and skin irritation that do not use animals at all.
Some animal tests have been replaced altogether by the combined use of computer simulations and mathematical modeling as well as in vitro methods. In today’s labs, blood can now be extracted from horseshoe crabs to measure the presence of long-lived bacterial toxins instead of needing to test live rabbits for the fever-producing abnormalities of intravenous therapies. Also thanks to knowledge gained from using rabbits to test for human pregnancy, researchers were able to develop pregnancy test kits for use at home. These kits eliminate the need to use animals any further in pregnancy tests.
