Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Issues in animal experimentation
- 2 A history of animal experimentation
- 3 Opposition to animal experimentation
- 4 The moral status of animals
- 5 Animal use
- 6 The regulation of experiments
- 7 Seeking alternatives
- 8 Conclusions
- Ethical guidelines for students in laboratory classes involving the use of animals or animal tissues
- References
- Index
Preface to the second edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Issues in animal experimentation
- 2 A history of animal experimentation
- 3 Opposition to animal experimentation
- 4 The moral status of animals
- 5 Animal use
- 6 The regulation of experiments
- 7 Seeking alternatives
- 8 Conclusions
- Ethical guidelines for students in laboratory classes involving the use of animals or animal tissues
- References
- Index
Summary
It is now nearly ten years since Cambridge University Press published Animal Experimentation: A Guide to the Issues (2000). It is appropriate to reflect on what has happened since then within the accepted framework of the ‘three Rs’ principles (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement: Russell and Burch 1959) in animal research, education and testing. What advances, for example, have been made in the search for alternatives to the use of vertebrates in biomedical research? Are there fewer animals used in research today? Has there been a renewal of the impetus to refine experimentation with animal welfare as the priority?
To answer such questions requires a thorough reappraisal of where western biomedicine, education and safety testing are presently placing their emphases. Overwhelmingly, the extraordinary growth in research involving laboratory mice in all areas of genetic and molecular research has seen an increase in the number of animals used in scientific procedures for the first time since the 1980s. The enormous breeding programmes required to generate heterozygous strains of mice with genetic modifications has brought to bear entirely new ethical and welfare concerns regarding husbandry, housing and ‘surplus’ animals. What steps have been taken in Britain, Europe, the USA, Australasia and elsewhere to address this? Were existing regulatory frameworks adequate, or have relevant statutes been necessarily updated?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Animal ExperimentationA Guide to the Issues, pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009