Nathalie Taiana
This summer is finally coming! After weeks of wet and cold weather, it’s finally getting warm. On top of that, the Federal Council has decided to further relax the number of coronavirus cases. I hope you have already had the opportunity to toast it in a garden pub!
The fact that the corona situation is easing is a result of the vaccinations, among other things. And we owe this to intensive research – and animal experiments.
For example, it was investigated whether the immune system of mammals reacts to the various vaccines at all. Or how these should be dosed and how often they should be injected. Side effects were also looked for in the animal studies. It was not until the vaccines had been successfully tested in mice, rats and rhesus monkeys that the first experiments in humans were allowed.
Animal experiments are a very emotional topic for a lot of people – including me. Nobody wants animals to suffer unnecessarily. That is why the research community, together with the authorities, has been relying on the so-called “3R principle” for decades. The three Rs stand for “replace”, “reduce”, “refine” (replace, reduce, improve): wherever possible, animal experiments should be replaced by other research approaches, the number of animals in non-replaceable experiments should be minimized as much as possible and the tests are carried out in such a way that the stress on the animals is as small as possible.
This approach has already borne considerable fruit. For example, the often repeated claim that laboratory animals are used to test cosmetics is wrong, at least for Europe. The last such test was approved in Switzerland in 1995 – over 25 years ago!
There are now other options for many scientific questions: For some tests we can only use a few cells instead of whole animals. Today we can also completely simulate other things on the computer. In spite of everything, we cannot yet do without animal experiments entirely.
But that is exactly what a popular initiative that is currently being debated in parliament is calling for. She wants to completely ban research with animals – and also tests on humans. It’s not just about drug tests and operations: the ban would also forbid studies with animals or humans on the subject of “learning” or “sleep”, for example. The demands of the initiators went far too far for the National Council (and for once all parliamentary groups were in agreement). The ball is currently with the Council of States – and we will probably vote on it this winter.
If we want to make progress in the fight against corona, cancer and other diseases, we unfortunately cannot stop research with laboratory animals today. What is needed, however, is more research into alternative methods. This is exactly what the Federal Council announced in February: It launched a new national research program on 3Rs. This program will help Switzerland to come a big step closer to the long-term goal of completely abandoning animal testing.