The time has come to plan for a future where the Three Rs will have served their purpose, animal experimentation will have been consigned to history, and humane biomedical science in research, testing and education will have become the norm, for the benefit of humans and animals alike
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References
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For logistical reasons, what should have been an after-dinner speech had to be given before the dinner. The problem was that the guests had to dine in several small rooms, as no room was big enough to accommodate them all.
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This comment was intended as a joke. I would never claim to have the skills required of a diplomat.
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DeitchG. (2002). For the Love of Prague, 4th edition, 320 pp. Prague, Czech Republic: Baset Books. “Prague is still Prague. Regimes come and go. The Castle is still there. I look at a book of photographs of Prague of 100 years ago: the historic streets and palaces, the sky pierced by a hundred towers — our square — and it's all still here to see and feel!”
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Masaryk University, founded in 1919, was renamed Purkyně University in 1960, but reverted to its original name in 1990, following the Velvet Revolution.
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Unfortunately, Eva Streiblova was unwell, and could not accept an invitation to be a special guest at the Gala Dinner.
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Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976) was a soviet biologist and agronomist who rejected Mendelism. He pursued “socialist genetics” and was the favourite scientist of Joseph Stalin. He denounced Mendelian thought as “reactionary and decadent” and Mendelian thinkers as “enemies of the Soviet people”. Science textbooks were re-written, his leading position in Soviet science was maintained until the mid-1960s, and his influence persisted long after that.
7.
Professor Oldřich Nečas (1925–2008) became Head of the Biology Department in 1960. He was frequently in trouble with the Communist regime, and was not allowed to travel abroad for about 20 years. Informers were all around, waiting to catch people out and report them. The Government subsequently appointed a Party member as Head of Department, but Augustin Svoboda was appointed to the position in 1992.
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CervinkaM. & BallsM. (ed.) (1995). Alternatives to Animal Experimentation and Alternativy k pokusům na zvířatech, 100 pp + 100pp. Hradec Králové, Czech Republic: Nucleus HK for TEMPUS JEP 1485, Charles University Medical Faculty.
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BurchR.L. (1995). The progress of human experimental technique since 1959: A personal view. ATLA23, 776–783. [Reprinted with minor amendments in ATLA 37, 269–275.]
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King James Authorised Version of the Bible (1611). Acts2: v16–v18.
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BallsM. (2014). Openness and animal research: The gauntlet has been thrown down. ATLA42, 213–214.
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BallsM. (2011). Replacing animal experimentation: On creating the puzzles to be solved. ATLA39, 1–2. “We must realise that, though we have many pieces to try to fit together, we certainly don't have all the pieces we need and we don't know how many pieces are missing. In addition, we must be suspicious that the pieces we do have are not merely the parts of one puzzle, but may be parts of an unknown number of different puzzles. Moreover, we cannot assume that all the pieces are of equal value, as we know that, far from being lifeless equivalents cut from the original picture with a jig-saw to form a conventional jigsaw puzzle, there are, within each piece of information having potential pharmacotoxicological significance, stories and histories, and pluses and minuses, and main streams and blind alleys, and dynamic interactions among them, that are far more profound. Worst of all, we have no picture on a box to guide us — we have to create the eventual picture or pictures ourselves, by using strategies and applying rules which we have to devise and lay down along the way.”
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The use of humanity and related words is not without its problems: humane can be confused with human, and can be a trap for editors and proof-readers; worse — humanity can be used to mean “the quality or state of being kind to other people or to animals”, i.e. “the quality or state of being humane”, but it can also be used to refer to “the human race”; humane means “marked by compassion, sympathy or consideration for humans and animals”, while inhuman and inhumane refer to “not being humane” or “lacking compassion, sympathy or consideration”. I have always tried to avoid the use of cruel, meaning “wilfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it”, since thoughtless is more likely to apply when laboratory animals are not given sufficient care or consideration. As I was writing this, I came across the headline of an article in my local newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press, on 7 October 2014, which read: Humanity's rapacious nature is putting entire planet at risk!
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CombesR.D. & BallsM. (2014). Every silver lining has a cloud: The scientific and animal welfare issues surrounding a new approach to the production of transgenic animals. ATLA42, 137–145.
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KolarR. (2014). How long must they suffer? Success and failure of our efforts to end animal tragedy in laboratories. In Abstracts of the 9th World Congress, Prague, 2014. ALTEX Proceedings3(1/14), 11. There will be no published proceedings related to the Prague Congress, but it is to be hoped that this worrying analysis will nevertheless be published somewhere.
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King James Authorised Version of the Bible (1611). “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” 1 Corinthians 13: v13.
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BallsM. (2013). The labelling of all medicinal products as Dependent on Animal Research would be a minefield to be avoided at all costs. ATLA41, 325–327. Professor Lord Winston said, “There is a case for having legislation to make it clear that a particular drug has only been possible for human consumption because of animal testing”. This, he said, “Could be stamped on the packet, rather like a [notice on a] cigarette packet”. This made me wonder what manufacturers would need to put on the leaflet inside the drug packet, to explain what the label on the outside of the packet actually meant, and I suggested in an editorial that transparency and total honesty would require something like this: Testing on animals: Despite the fact that thousands of animals were used in the discovery and development of this product, no guarantee can be offered that it will work or be sufficiently safe in your case. This is because animals and humans are significantly different in terms of their physiology, pathology and responses to drugs, so laboratory animals can usually provide only poor models of human diseases and responses to possible therapies. In addition, the animal tests conducted took little or no account of human genetic variation, of differences in human geographical, societal, occupational or lifestyle factors, of the simultaneous incidence of other diseases, or of the concurrent use of other drugs. It is for these reasons that it must be admitted that there are insuperable uncertainties about the efficacy of the product and the risk of potentially serious side-effects of many kinds.
LayK. (2014). Unethical cancer screening trial has to stop, say experts. The Times, 17 September 2014.
28.
I am delighted that the theme of the 9th Congress was Humane Science in the 21st Century, and I hope the co-chairs of the 10th World Congress (September 2017, Seattle, Washington, USA) will consider changing its theme from The Three Rs in Action to Humane Science in Action.
29.
My thinking is not out of line with that of two of the most committed and experienced proponents of the Three Rs concept, namely, Horst Spielmann, who provided the theme for the 9th Congress, and Alan Goldberg, who gave an outstanding plenary lecture on The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique at the 7th Congress (Rome, 2009: Goldberg, A. [2010]. The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique: Is it relevant today?ALTEX27, Special Issue, 25–27).
30.
In my plenary lecture at the 1996 Utrecht Congress (Balls, M. [1997]. The Three Rs concept of alternatives to animal experimentation. In Animal Experimentation and Ethics, ed. Van ZutphenL.F.M. & BallsM., pp. 27–41. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier), I interpreted the “ages” of the Three Rs in terms of the Great Ages of Western Civilisation, as the 1950s: the Age of Renaissance; the 1960s: the Age of Darkness; the 1970s: the Age of Reason; the 1980s: the Age of Reformation; and the 1990s: the Age of Revolution. However, to my great disappointment, the revolution has not happened. All we have is a kind of plodding evolution.
31.
BallsM. (2010). The Principles of Human Experimental Technique: Timeless insights and unheeded warnings. ALTEX27, Special Issue, 19–23.
32.
My tie, given to me at the 1999 Bologna Congress by my friend Klaus Cussler (who was also at the 9th Congress) has on it a large number of tortoises, all moving slowly in the same direction. One of them is saying, “Get a move on!”
