Ormandy Elisabeth H, Schuppli Catherine A, Weary Daniel M
University of British Columbia, Animal Welfare Program, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Altern Lab Anim. 2009 Feb;37(1):63-8. doi: 10.1177/026119290903700109.
The Three Rs--Reduction, Replacement and Refinement--which were first proposed in 1959 by Russell and Burch, have become widely accepted principles in the governance of humane animal research. However, there is substantial variation in the ways in which different countries document the numbers and types of research animals used, making it difficult to determine how effectively the Three Rs are being implemented. Here, we provide the first data illustrating worldwide trends in animal use for research purposes. To document global trends in animal use, we sampled 2691 articles from 24 countries, published between 1983 and 2007, in four scientific journals. We show that the percentage of articles reporting animal use has risen in the past 15 years. The rising popularity of genetic modification methods has contributed to this trend: reported genetically-modified animal use has more than doubled since 1997. We also show that mice are the most commonly-used species for genetic modification, and that, even in 2007, relatively inefficient random integration methods were still widely used to achieve genetic modification. These results illustrate shortcomings in the effort to implement the Three Rs in animal research.
“3R原则”——减少、替代和优化，由拉塞尔和伯奇于1959年首次提出，已成为人道动物研究管理中被广泛接受的原则。然而，不同国家记录所使用实验动物的数量和类型的方式存在很大差异，这使得很难确定“3R原则”的实施效果如何。在此，我们提供了首份数据，展示了全球范围内用于研究目的的动物使用趋势。为记录动物使用的全球趋势，我们从24个国家在1983年至2007年间发表于四种科学期刊上的2691篇文章中进行了抽样。我们发现，在过去15年里，报告使用动物的文章比例有所上升。基因改造方法的日益普及促成了这一趋势：自1997年以来，报告的转基因动物使用量增加了一倍多。我们还表明，小鼠是基因改造最常用的物种，而且即使在2007年，相对低效的随机整合方法仍被广泛用于实现基因改造。这些结果说明了在动物研究中实施“3R原则”方面存在的不足。
