Advancing the 3Rs: innovation, implementation, ethics and society.

The 3Rs principle of replacing, reducing and refining the use of animals in science has been gaining widespread support in the international research community and appears in transnational legislation such as the European Directive 2010/63/EU, a number of national legislative frameworks like in Switzerland and the UK, and other rules and guidance in place in countries around the world. At the same time, progress in technical and biomedical research, along with the changing status of animals in many societies, challenges the view of the 3Rs principle as a sufficient and effective approach to the moral challenges set by animal use in research. Given this growing awareness of our moral responsibilities to animals, the aim of this paper is to address the question: Can the 3Rs, as a policy instrument for science and research, still guide the morally acceptable use of animals for scientific purposes, and if so, how? The fact that the increased availability of alternatives to animal models has not correlated inversely with a decrease in the number of animals used in research has led to public and political calls for more radical action. However, a focus on the simple measure of total animal numbers distracts from the need for a more nuanced understanding of how the 3Rs principle can have a genuine influence as a guiding instrument in research and testing. Hence, we focus on three core dimensions of the 3Rs in contemporary research: (1) What scientific

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Copyright © 2023 Grimm, Biller-Andorno, Buch, Dahlhoff, Davies, Cederroth, Maissen, Lukas, Passini, Törnqvist, Olsson and Sandström.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

While the paper reports on the scientific concept of NRP 79, the opinions and views presented are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent the position of SNF, the NRP 79 Steering Committee or the authors’ respective institutional affiliations. This paper was developed as an initiative of the Steering Committee of NRP 79. The following members are remunerated for their time invested in NRP 79: NB-A, TB, MD, GD, HG (as president of the SCC), ET, EP, and IO but not for the preparation of this manuscript. The following authors do not receive any remuneration for their engagement in NRP 79 nor in this paper: JS, WL, and OM. This paper reflects the programmatic development of NRP 79 and did not affect project selection. The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.