PREPARE: guidelines for planning animal research and testing

PREPARE: guidelines for planning animal research and testing

There is widespread concern about the quality, reproducibility and translatability of studies involving research animals. Although there are a number of reporting guidelines available, there is very little overarching guidance on how to plan animal experiments, despite the fact that this is the logical place to start ensuring quality. In this paper we present the PREPARE guidelines: Planning Re...

Psychological & Behavioural Animal Experiments and Research Testing

Psychologists have investigated the effects of deliberately induced stress, such as that arising from social isolation, either by solitary confinement or by separation of infant animals from their mother. Animals are also subjected to deliberate brain damage, in order to observe the effects on behaviour. Electric shocks or other painful stimuli are often used to study the process of learning wh...

Testing colour-appearance models: Guidelines for coordinated research

Ethical and Scientific Considerations Regarding Animal Testing and Research

In 1959, William Russell and Rex Burch published the seminal book, The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique, which emphasized reduction, refinement, and replacement of animal use, principles which have since been referred to as the ‘‘3 Rs’’. These principles encouraged researchers to work to reduce the number of animals used in experiments to the minimum considered necessary, refine or l...

Non-animal methodologies within biomedical research and toxicity testing.

Laboratory animal models are limited by scientific constraints on human applicability, and increasing regulatory restrictions, driven by social concerns. Reliance on laboratory animals also incurs marked - and in some cases, prohibitive - logistical challenges, within high-throughput chemical testing programmes, such as those currently underway within Europe and the US. However, a range of non-...