In response to a Guardian article calling for an end to animal testing in research, two leading UK scientists explain why this isn't yet a possibility.
The arguments centre around new technologies, such as organoids, and other cell-based research media that will hopefully replace the need for live animals in future research.
PET's chair of trustees Professor Robin Lovell-Badge from the Crick Institute in London writes: 'With complex areas of biology, such as the brain and behaviour, reproductive and endocrine systems, the immune system, tumour biology, or where there is a need to account for ageing, altered physiologies, environmental effects, etc, no current [technology] gets anything close to the real biology.'
He adds: 'All scientists working with animals in the UK have signed up to the 3Rs: replacement (developing alternatives), reduction and refinement' to mimimise the impact of research on animals, and that prematurely calling for the end of animal research will 'demotivate the excellent, highly motivated and well-trained animal technologists who are essential to much of the work on animals that goes on in the UK – and, critically, for their care.'
Read Professor Lovell-Badge's full letter, plus another from Professor Emma Robinson at the University of Bristol here.