Animal experiments on itch

New thinking on animal experiments

National regulations on animal experiments vary widely between countries but growing numbers of researchers in Britain believe that the procedures are in need of an overhaul. And a new report by a group of members of Britain’s upper house of parliament, the House of Lords, advises a shakeup that both speeds up consideration of researchers’ requests but opens up public scrutiny of such work. The...

EU statistics on animal experiments for 2014.

Nomenclatural itch versus patrolling itch: comments on O’Hara (2011)

In the last years there have been renewed criticisms towards those who, theoretically, abuse of naming new taxa, supposedly with the only (or main) objective of having their names associated to the nomina of these taxa and, thus, being ‘immortalized’ (Pillon & Chase 2007; Dubois 2008; Evenhuis 2008). As Evenhuis (2008) has carefully shown, however, this kind of criticism is almost as old as tax...

Systematic reviews of animal experiments.

There are strong scientific, ethical and legislative imperatives to replace animal experiments, rather than focusing efforts on improving them. Therefore, the Dr Hadwen Trust advocates that when systematic reviews identify weaknesses in animal experiments, the priority should be their replacement with more relevant non-animal methods. Individual researchers, universities, companies, funders and...

Laparoscopic Partial Hepatectomy: Animal Experiments

As a first step in firmly establishing laparoscopic hepatectomy, we introduce a porcine model of laparoscopic partial hepatectomy. This procedure has been successfully performed under the normal-pressure or low-pressure pneumoperitoneum condition supported by the full-thickness abdominal wall lifting technique. An ultrasonic dissector combined with electrocautery, newly developed by Olympus Opt...