Share thisSome Implications for Guidelines, Regulations, and the Wider World of Biomedical Research
The Science can Change the Policy, and the Policy will Change the Science -- Sebastien Farnaud
Photo courtesy M.Meijer
On December 1, 2009 European Union member states ratified the Treaty of Lisbon, which grants legal status to animals by virtue of sentience. This was a defining moment in the age-old debate about whether animals feel pain and if so, whether they know it and suffer. It was also the culmination of decades during which animal welfare had risen in political importance.
Conferring sentience signalled the coming of comprehensive guidelines and tighter regulations regarding treatment of live animals used for experimental and other scientific purpose. Henceforth, investigators will not only show cause for a design using animals; the design would incorporate best practice in animal well-being. Among other things, that means delimiting suffering at every stage, from transportation through experimental procedures and levels of pain, and where applicable, to end of life. It means showing due diligence in providing an environment within which each animal may express species specific behaviour and consistently monitoring for stress. And, it will mean transparency.
This last, the demand for transparency, goes beyond the legislator’s office and the lab. Biomedical research is under the microscope in many European as well as North American countries where members of the general public hold very strong views about animal welfare and animal rights. In the United States, there are 117 animal welfare courses taught at law schools and undergraduate universities. In Switzerland, there are animal advocate lawyers in many cantons and in Zurich, one who is a public prosecutor. This is not surprising considering that in 1992 the Dignity of Creatures was embedded as a principle of the Swiss constitution, and in 2008 the Dignity of Animals was the pivotal proviso for the country’s first Animal Welfare Law. In the Netherlands’ 2006 election, a new political party, Party for the Animals, won two of the 150 seats in the Dutch House of Representatives, and in the 2007 Provincial States elections, Party for the Animals won nine seats in eight provinces and one of the seventy-five seats in the Dutch Senate. Finland has established a National Ethics Committee which aims to harmonise practices that reduce the number of animals and both reduce and streamline procedures. In the UK, the high ground on animal welfare, once sparsely populated by passionate humanitarians and also by some outlaws, is a busy place now and the call of many voices is a familiar chorus: we will move ahead proactively on the 3R’s. The UK already has some of the EU’s strictest licensing regulation.