Nautilus

Proposal for journals to include animal welfare details

In this week’s Nature, Hanno Wuerbel of the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, points out that although a large majority of the public is supportive of the principles of animal experimentation to improve biological knowledge, human and veterinary health, nature conservation and animal welfare, the public also expects strict adherence to the 3R-principle (replace, reduce, refine) to minimize animal numbers, pain, suffering and lasting harm.

A set of News Features in Nature (444; 807-816; 14 December 2006) identified considerable scope for advancing the 3Rs. Dr Wuerbel proposes that journals could play a much more effective role by including a 3R section in the methods section of published papers: first, to allow authors of controversial papers to detail their measures to minimize pain, suffering and lasting harm in the animals; and second, to allow authors to describe novel tools or techniques applied in the published work that serve the 3Rs.

More details about the proposal are described in the Nature Correspondence. We welcome views from authors and other scientists about the proposed policy.

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Joanne Whitehead said:

    Great idea – having an animal welface section in relevant articles (whether optional or obligatory) should stimulate researchers to at least consider what could be done to optimize animal research in support of the 3Rs. I think it can be very easy to become complacent, and treat lab animals as just another consumable.

  2. Report this comment

    Victoria Buck said:

    I applaud the Working Party of the Nuffield Council who first proposed this neat, simple and powerful idea in their report. I applaud Hanno Wurbel for delivering the proposal, via Nature Correspondence, directly to the scientific community. I will applaud any editor, hopefully this one, who has the courage and vision to implement the initiative which will bring the 3Rs in from the fringes to where they belong – at the heart of science.

  3. Report this comment

    Nikki Osborne said:

    A number of organisations, including the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the APC, have highlighted the importance of journals publishing more information regarding the use of animals in research. This issue has also been raised at international meetings such as the World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences. Like Hanno Wuerbel and collegues, the RSPCA believes that all journals publishing research involving animals should ask authors for, and be prepared to publish much more information on issues relating to the 3Rs. Journals should also have an ethical policy stating what animal research they consider acceptable for publication. In the interests of transparency this should be readily available either on their website or in the journal. With this in mind the Research Animals Department of the RSPCA is currently surveying the ethical publication policies of peer-reviewed English-language journals that publish primary data involving the use of animals in research and testing. Some data from this study will be published in October 2007 as part of the RSPCA’s ‘The state of animal welfare’ report. However, given the interest in this subject perhaps a journal such as Nature would like to consider publishing a fuller report of this research.

  4. Report this comment

    Jennifer Cano said:

    I believe that this is a positive step towards drawing attention to the need for more humane methods to achieve useful results in scientific research. However, I think that it is imperative that we try to eliminate pain, suffering, and harm….not just minimize it.

  5. Report this comment

    Eva Waiblinger said:

    As a member of a governmental animal welfare committee (Basel, Switzerland) and Ex-grantee of 3R-Foundation Switzerland I can only agree to Hanno’s suggestion. In every application for permission to perform animal experiments in Switzerland, the applicants have to consider 3R possibilities of their research anyway, so integrating this information also in their published papers would be easy for them and informative for peers in their field, als well as beneficial for the advancement of the 3R.

  6. Report this comment

    John J. Pippin, M.D. said:

    Public disclosure of measures taken to replace, reduce and refine animal use in research protocols is helpful only if it does not become formulaic and thus irrelevant. Specifically, disclosure must not be limited to minimization of pain and suffering, which often seems to be the only approach considered.

    The greatest attention (and scrutiny) must be applied to ‘R’ that matters most — replacement of animal use with non-animal methods. The rationale, literature review, and justifications for animal use should be part of this disclosure.

    In order for this to translate into editorial decisions that can be evaluated by readers, Nature should devise and publish criteria for acceptance of animal studies. Those criteria should not accept that animal studies are justified de facto, should not be restricted to the topics of reduction and refinement, and must prescribe rejection of submitted research that uses animals when other methods are available.

    Otherwise, this potentially good idea will be just one more cosmetic providing feel-good cover for unjustifiable animal use. Nature should be above all that.

  7. Report this comment

    Kathleen Conlee said:

    Journal requirements for inclusion of detailed information on animal welfare and use in submitted manuscripts, including how animal pain and distress were prevented or addressed, would likely increase scientists’ attention to pain and distress and thus improve both animal welfare and science. Information on animal welfare would also enable reviewers and editors to determine if proper procedures and best practices were followed as well as whether research was compromised in cases where anesthetics, analgesics, tranquilizers, sedatives, or other treatments were not provided when necessary, for example. The advent of electronic journals as well as the ability to post online supplementary information to printed articles should address the issue of space concerns and thus accelerate needed progress on reporting of animal welfare in the literature.

    According to Veterinary and Comparative Orthopaedics and Traumatology (editorial, volume 11, number 4, 1998), the journal requires that a paragraph be inserted into the manuscript regarding post-operative care, “detailing the care, and including drug dosages and regimes.” Failure to include this section will result in the return of the manuscript to the author(s). Finally, the editor echoed many of the comments that have been posted here, “[W]e believe that if authors are required to include such material in a submission, they are more likely to carry out the protocol.” I do hope that Nature and other journals will follow this lead.

    Kathleen Conlee

    The Humane Society of the United States

  8. Report this comment

    Charlotte Burn said:

    This is a good idea. There are many useful innovations being developed, from effective enrichments to statistical power tests that enable animal numbers to be reduced, and these innovations should be encouraged. Also, they can be important methodological components in their own right, since we are increasingly aware that stress, the social environment, and environmental complexity can have profound effects on experimental results.

  9. Report this comment

    Carla Molento said:

    As animal welfare professor in Brazil, I would like to stress the relevance of Hanno’s suggestion to our context. Having a published 3R section in every paper would be extremely helpful for countries where the discussion is in its initial steps. It would help in both philosophical and technical terms.

    Cheers from Brazil,

    Carla Molento

    Universidade Federal do Paraná

  10. Report this comment

    Elisabeth Ormandy (University of British Columbia) said:

    I am currently conducting a bibliometric-style study, which primarily focuses on using published research articles to evaluate the welfare impacts of genomics research. My review of thousands of papers in Science, Nature and other leading publications reinforces the key message in Weurbel’s letter; methodological details necessary to understand the effects of research on animal welfare, including such basics as the number of animals used, are often not explicitly reported. Refinement in common procedures and reductions in animal use would be greatly advanced through improved description of the animals, and how they are acquired, housed, treated and euthanised.

  11. Report this comment

    Dr Gill Langley said:

    Victoria Buck (Nature 446:856) suggests that apathy is a reason why individual scientists are unwilling to endorse openly the inclusion of the 3Rs in journal articles.

    Having worked for 30 years to develop and implement replacements for animal procedures, my experience is that apathy is very common, especially in academia. It was also identified as a barrier to replacement by the Nuffield Council’s report; and by Prof. Robert Winston (in his evidence to a House of Lords Committee)when he admitted “…scientists may well have turned a blind eye many times to alternatives” and “…that may still be happening in the use of animals.”

    In Britain, the drug industry has introduced advanced cell culture, molecular and computer-based alternatives, and since 1995 industry-conducted animal tests have fallen from a million a year to 625,000. But in the same 10-year period, animal experiments in British universities and medical schools have increased relentlessly from 824,000 to 1.26 million per year – a rise of 52%.

    These lines of evidence do indicate apathy in the research community. The current review of EU legislation (Directive 86/609/EEC) will probably introduce a heavier obligation on scientists to explore and implement replacement methods. It would be to the credit of researchers throughout Europe to act before they are forced to by legislation.

  12. Report this comment

    Catherine Willett, Ph.D. (Science Policy Advisor, PETA) said:

    The suggestion of Würbel to include a description of how the 3Rs have been addressed in research as a requirement for publication is to be lauded, and provides an initial portal into a crucial discussion regarding the use of animals in experimentation, a minor aspect of which is dissemination of procedures to minimize pain, discomfort and stress. A more looming and pressing issue is the replacement of animals in experimentation (the third, and most essential of the 3Rs). In addition to methods used to relieve pain and suffering, it is essential to address the third R by including justification for the use of animals in the information required for publication.

    (Maxine adds: this comment has been reduced in length.)

  13. Report this comment

    Ann Viera said:

    One of the ground rules I use when searching for alternatives searches with principal investigators is: Focus on refinements: check the materials and methods section of articles for alternatives, especially refinements, and document alternatives , especially refinements , in articles that result from the research.

    But a librarian suggesting that alternatives be documented in the articles does not mean that the journal will have room or make room for this vital information or that the PI will remember to include it. An incentive or requirement that it be present would help a lot based on my experience searching for alternatives. I agree whole-heartedly with Wurbel that a 3Rs section is needed in the methods section of journals. Some journals already have one: I use an example from the journal Artificial Organs that includes in the Materials and Methods a section titled Animal treatment.

    Although refinements are emphasized in the ground rule above, some of the other ground rules I use are FRAME’s Early Planning approach (FRAME has a useful flow chart to explain it), the importance of statistical design (I work closely with a statistician and/or refer people to Michael Festing’s work), and thinking broadly about alternatives. I hope these ground rules will help contribute ultimately to a reduction or replacement of animals in research, not just refinements.

  14. Report this comment

    Tim Morris said:

    The Nuffield Report (of which I was a member of the Working Group) found no substantive research on attitudes to animal use. I am not sure we are able to guess at the motivations or not of those who publish….A more stuctured assessment would be needed from my experience.

    As a journal publisher I know, like many journals we offer on-line additions, but also say in our Instructions to Authors

    “Measures to refine experimental techniques to benefit animal welfare can be described in detail”

    https://www.rsmpress.co.uk/la_gfa.htm

    We do get good information and my solution is simple: Authors are anxious to publish…so address concrens to Journal editors…and authors follow!

  15. Report this comment

    Wendy Koch, DVM said:

    I would love to see this suggestion implemented. Having an “animal welfare” section would have many benefits, allowing authors to explain their refinements and allowing others to implement them. There may also be scientific benefits, not only because good welfare = good science but also because there are some indications that the ability to replicate results might sometimes be dependent on factors such as housing and care. I appreciate Nature’s interest in this proposal, and I hope the positive responses encourage Nature to become a leader in this regard.

  16. Report this comment

    Vicente Alfaro said:

    I think not only animal wellfare should be described in the scientific articles.The scientific article communicates results of research to other investigators; therefore, it must contain a complete description of the experiment to help other researchers when designing their future investigations. However, poorly detailed data on laboratory animal use is given in published articles. Relatively few articles provide extensive information on the conditions in which the animals were kept, the description of euthanasia methods, or even the number of animals used in the experiments.

    Perhaps you could find of interest a review on this issue and some proposals for reporting laboratory animal use published two years ago in METHODS AND FINDINGS IN EXPERIMENTAL AND CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY

    27 (7): 495-502 SEP 2005 and entitled "Specification of laboratory animal use in scientific articles: current low detail in the journals’ instructions for

    authors and some proposals"

  17. Report this comment

    Alexandra Breunig (IAT) said:

    We highly appreciate Professor Würbel’s proposal. The integration of the 3 Rs in professional journals is an important step towards the realisation of this principle. The time has come to bring the 3 Rs from their shadowy existence to the awareness of the scientific community. We hope that Nature accepts this proposal and that other journals will follow. In view of Nature’s high reputation and wide-ranging readership it is predestined to play a vanguard role.

    Interdisziplinäre Arbeitsgemeinschaft Tierethik, Heidelberg (Germany)

Comments are closed.