Alternatives to Animal Experimentation

This special issue of ALTEX is publicising what the 3R Research Foundation has achieved in the past and what projects are currently underway. This special issue is intended to improve awareness of the projects funded by the Foundation and to provide a training tool. The first section includes updated descriptions of 20 projects from the past ten years. These projects, involving basic research, the development of new medicines and safety testing, were continued by the project heads after funding from the Foundation ceased. This sustainability can be seen as a great success of the Foundation's activities. The second part of the special issue concentrates on the 17 current projects, illustrating how 3R-relevant projects are being developed every day both in Switzerland and abroad. The contributions provide specialised knowledge that has already been acquired and that can and should be adopted and developed further. Thanks to this special issue of ALTEX, the projects will be accessible in the international database, which means that an increasing number of people will become aware of them. Furthermore this issue will be used in compulsory training courses for animal experimentalists. The fact that the information exceeds the limits of one single research area may well give many young scientists new ideas relating to the 3R principle. The present special issue provides a snapshot of 20 years of research efforts. The projects that are completed in the future will continue to be listed in the 3R-Info Bulletins, which are published three times a year. Current activities can be accessed on the Foundation's website (www.forschung3r.ch). This internet site is the Foundation's most important tool for documenting and publicising research results. The 3R Research Foundation was set up twenty years ago by the Parliamentary Group for Animal Experimentation Questions. The aim of this group was to bring together the federal authorities, people concerned about animal protection and the pharmaceutical industry to discuss how animal experimentation could be reduced, refined and replaced. The fate of laboratory animals was to be improved without affecting research within the Swiss pharmaceutical industry. The 3R concept developed by the British scientists Russell and Burch in 1959 was the obvious tool to achieve this aim. Russell and Burch were of the opinion that first-class scientific work inevitably went hand in hand with humane treatment of laboratory animals. Badly planned experiments and incomplete statistics were bound to result in unnecessary suffering on the part of …