Benefits, Necessity and Justification in Animal Research

Abstract

The cost–benefit assessment in the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 is said to ensure that animals are only used in experiments which are justified and necessary. The way in which the Home Office Inspectorate derives the cost–benefit assessment is explained in the Report of the Animal Procedures Committee for 1993. However, evaluation of both costs and benefits is largely subjective, as are concepts such as “necessity” and “justification”. These concepts mean different things to different people in different places and at different times, depending on the pressures to which they are subject. These include the socio-economic climate and the context in which the proposed research is to be carried out. Animal use cannot, therefore, be said to be necessary and/or beneficial unless serious questions are answered with respect to who or what the research is necessary for, who or what will benefit from it and who defines the criteria used in the justification process. Retrospective analysis of whether the proposed benefit was actually achieved and applied is also important. Discussion regarding the necessity, benefits and justification of individual research projects, and of overall research goals or directions, tends to be obscured by the polarised debate over the morality and scientific validity of animal experiments as a whole. This paper raises some of the issues that could be discussed in a wider view of the cost–benefit assessment, with reference to selected areas of animal use as examples.