The use of non-human animals in biomedical research has given important contributions to the medical progress achieved in our day, but it has also been a cause of heated public, scientific and philosophical discussion for hundreds of years. This review, with a mainly European outlook, addresses the history of animal use in biomedical research, some of its main protagonists and antagonists, and ...

Animal Experiments (AE) are fundamental in the training of almost all pharmacology-related post-graduate courses.1 However, research studies have questioned their human applicability, toxicological utility, and validity. Other limitations like their exorbitant costs, difficulty in procurement of animals, strict regulations, and reservations about animal ethics by animal rights organizations and...

The canine teeth of the mature ferret have closed apices. They are easily accessible for operating purposes and are sufficiently large, allowing conventional cavity preparation techniques to be prepared using ordinary dental instruments. Handling of the ferret is relatively easy since it becomes quite tame after a period of time. The body weight in male is greater and the teeth larger than thos...

Animal experiments have been widely conducted in the life sciences for more than a century, and have long been a subject of ethical and societal controversy due to the deliberate infliction of harm upon sentient animals. However, the harmful use of animals may also negatively impact the mental health of researchers themselves. We sought to evaluate the anxiety level of researchers engaged in an...

For demonstration of animal experiments to undergraduate students of medical and paramedical faculties, a large number of animals are sacrificed every year. Such demonstrations can be humanely presented using computer simulations rather than experimental animals. Considering the necessity of such computer assisted learning tool to reduce/ replace the animal use and to refine the demonstrations ...

The size of the organs in the body is continuously regulated to match their functional capacity as required (review: Wallman and Winawer [79]). There is, however, probably no other organ so precisely controlled in size as the eye: to achieve full visual acuity, its length must be matched to the optical focal length of cornea and lens with a tolerance of about a tenth of a millimeter (equivalent...

The origins of the Three Rs (reduction, refinement, replacement) concept of alternatives to animal experiments are briefly reviewed, and examples are given of achievements and grounds for hope in the application of the concept, as well as of causes for concern. Attention is then focused on validation, the process whereby test methods are independently evaluated for the reliability and relevance...

Hypoxic-ischemic neonatal encephalopathy and ensuing brain damage is still an important problem in modern perinatal medicine. In this paper, we would like to share some of the results of our recent studies on neuroprotective therapies in animal experiments, as well as some literature reviews. From the basic animal studies, we have now obtained some possible candidates for therapeutic measures a...

In this article I review the association between exposure to carrageenan and the occurrence of colonic ulcerations and gastrointestinal neoplasms in animal models. Although the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1982 identified sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of degraded carrageenan in animals to regard it as posing a carcinogenic risk to humans, carrageenan is still use...

The objective of many animal experiments is to detect meaningful relationships among treatments and associated responses. Types of comparisons of means include pairwise multiple comparisons, planned orthogonal or nonorthogonal contrasts, and orthogonal polynomials. Some procedures are appropriate only for specific types of treatment designs and specific types of objectives. Pairwise, multiple c...