The 3 Rs Principle – Mind the Ethical Gap !

the goals of the 3Rs (replacing animals with non-animals (or animals of lower sentience), reduction in the number of animals used, and refining procedures so less harm is caused to the animals that are used) have gained wide acceptance over the 50 years since they were first proposed. These goals are now widely known and generally well accepted, both among institutions using animals in research and testing and among those working to protect animals from the harm caused by this use. these goals are explicitly referenced in many legislative texts and guidelines and are often cited by animal users in their comments to the public. Thus the 3Rs seem to be used as evidence of the research community’s commitment to meet high ethical standards in the care and use of laboratory animals. these principles seem so clear and comprehensive that it is tempting to believe that the only remaining challenge is to see that these are fully implemented in laboratories around the world and that this full implementation will pave the way for broad public support for any continued use of animals deemed necessary. However, there are important ethical issues that the 3Rs do not address, e.g., to what extent it is acceptable to genetically modify animals, or does the purpose of the experiment justify animal use. These issues are discussed elsewhere (Schuppli et al., 2004; Ibrahim, 2006) and will not be addressed in this paper. Instead, we focus on controversial ethical issues hidden within the 3Rs principle. We will highlight five such hidden value conflicts and argue that these conflicts will challenge the idea that the 3Rs principle is bound to generate a wide public consensus. We argue, rather, that underlying value differences will lead to conflicting interpretations on how to apply the 3Rs principle.