Europe’s proposed new rules on animal experiments have come under renewed fire today.
When they were first proposed last year many researchers complained that they could stifle vital work, especially on non-human primates. They also warned the proposed rules could drastically increase the cost of experiments, without increasing animal welfare.
Now the umbrella group European Medical Research Councils and the European Science Foundation have issued a report detailing the changes they believe are needed to the draft rules (pdf).
“We certainly welcome the opportunity to standardize animal care on a Europe-wide basis,” says Roger Lemon, a researcher University College London and chair of the ESF’s animal research expert group (The Scientist). “But where we have some difficulty is where some types of research would just be stopped all together.”
A group of UK medical charities, research funders and industry groups has also issued a statement of concern:
Our organisations support all efforts to bring a balanced approach to the revision of the Directive. However, we remain deeply concerned that elements of the draft revised Directive could have a number of potential adverse impacts on bioscience research, on medical and scientific progress and on scientific and commercial competitiveness, both in the UK and across Europe.
Mark Walport, the director of the Wellcome Trust, warned reporters that the rules as currently formulated “would simply close down some aspects of medical research that can only be addressed by animal models” (Times).
“It will increase the costs of research and the bureaucracy of research, and I’m afraid we think it will bring little or no benefit for animal welfare at all,” he says.
The European Parliament’s agriculture committee will vote on the proposed new rules on 31 March.
Nature’s coverage of this issue
Europe to revise animal-testing rules – 25 March 2009
Nature Medicine: Proposed animal research reforms spark concern in Europe – 1 December 2008
Editorial: Call to action – 20 November 2008
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