No one can deny that certain ethics are to be followed to prevent animal cruelty and suffering during experimentation. In fact the 3 ‘R’ principle proposes to reduce, refine and replace animals by providing suitable alternatives including in vitro models. A school of alternatives to laboratory animals has also been established to serve the purpose. It is pertinent to mention here that the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) serves as a National Cell Repository for supply of animal cell cultures from mosquito to man to scientists and researchers in the country. This will help to reduce animal experimentation. However, it is impossible to replace animals in all situations, particularly in final stages of drug and vaccine development, transplantation studies, toxicology, etc.

The strong rules and regulations laid down by a statutory body like CPCSEA for use of animals are necessary beyond any dispute. Rather, they should be applauded for their efforts in forming this body to look after animal maintenance and welfare.

It is erroneous and noxious to demand prohibition of animal experiments for demonstration purposes and also for not repeating the experiments, wherein results are already conclusively known. It is also mentioned in the new rules that the experiments should not be performed for the purpose of attaining or retaining manual skill. All these rules and regulations imposed by the Government are probably designed to uproot the teaching, training programmes taking us back to 16th century (rather than 21st century).

It is rather hard to believe that when the entire world is engaged in finding solutions to problems like scarcity of human tissue by advocating xeno-transplantation, we are going backwards in an attempt to take extra care of animals. Performing experiments on animals without acquiring necessary skills is more inhumane than handling of animals by a skillful researcher.

The production and use of transgenic animals has enhanced the number of scientific experiments and procedures performed on laboratory animals all over the world. It cannot be denied that the transgenic technology could provide significant benefits, for example, in the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals. It may be noted that animals involved in these experiments are given good care. Scientific ambition and commercial opportunism are likely to overwhelm every other kind of consideration in the use of animals. Thus in this changing scenario it is difficult to stop animal experimentation and go backwards when we are ready to take a leap into the 21st century.

The clause in the notification about applying for written permission with the exact number of animals required, complete experimental design and acquiring sanction from the funding agency seems impractical and ridiculous. The authoritarian approach of various Government agencies, lack of expert manpower with technical knowledge on the various individual projects and ‘swift movement’ of sanction papers will not allow the scientist/researcher to perform his work in the optimum time frame. This seems to be a potential problem in obtaining sanction for the use of animals.

ANJALI SHIRAS

PRADEEP. B. PARAB

RAMESH R. BHONDE