Research Methods in Life Sciences Commons^™

Scientists And Animal Research: Dr. Jekyll Or Mr. Hyde?, Andrew N. Rowan

Andrew N. Rowan, DPhil

Why is the public so sensitive about the use of a few tens of millions of animals in research when they do not object to killing hundreds of millions of pigs and cows and billions of chickens for our meat diet? Why is animal research considered so bad despite the public's high opinion of science (and scientists)? Perhaps it is the image of the scientist as an objective and cold individual who deliberately inflicts harm (pain, distress, or death) on his (the public image is usually male) innocent animal victims that arouses so much horror and concern. This paper does …

Prolonged Pain Research In Mice: Trends In Reference To The 3rs, Jonathan Balcombe, Hope Ferdowsian, Lauren Briese

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

This literature review documents trends in the use of mice in prolonged pain research, defined herein as research that subjects mice to a source of pain for at least 14 days. The total amount of prolonged pain research on mice has increased dramatically in the past decade for the 3 pain categories examined: neuropathic, inflammatory, and chronic pain. There has also been a significant rise in the number of prolonged mouse pain studies as a proportion of all mouse studies and of all mouse pain studies. The use of transgenic mice has also risen significantly in prolonged pain research, though …

Cancerous Contradictions: The Mis-Regulation Of Human Carcinogens Based On Animal Data, Andrew Knight, Jarrod Bailey, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

The regulation of human exposures to potential carcinogens constitutes society’s most important use of animal carcinogenicity data. However, for environmental contaminants of greatest U.S. concern, we found that in most cases (58.1%; 93/160) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considered the animal data inadequate to support a classification of probable human carcinogen or noncarcinogen.

The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is a leading international authority on carcinogenicity assessments. For chemicals lacking human exposure data (the great majority), IARC classifications of identical chemicals were significantly more conservative than EPA classifications (p

A Review Of The Institute Of Medicine’S Analysis Of Using Chimpanzees In Biomedical Research, Robert C. Jones, Ray Greek

Biomedicine and Animal Models in Research Collection

We argue that the recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 report, Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, are methodologically and ethically confused. We argue that a proper understanding of evolution and complexity theory in terms of the science and ethics of using chimpanzees in biomedical research would have had led the committee to recommend not merely limiting but eliminating the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research. Specifically, we argue that a proper understanding of the difference between the gross level of examination of species and examinations on finer levels can shed light on important methodological …