My Labonews

I know that quite a number of my readers not actually coming from science are not overly enthusiastic about animal experiments. I probably had a couple of discussions before about this subject and it very often leads to a dead end since most people still see horrible images of chimps with diodes in their brains or cute bunny rabbits that are being tested for cosmetics. This does not really help in the discussions and it's without any doubt that any responsible scientist is against unnecessary animal testing. It's also without any doubt that any time soon we could stop doing animal testing, there simply wouldn't be any medications and new treatments anymore.
Right now I'm correcting parts of our animal license renewal application that we send in to the authorities. Switzerland has one of the most stringent animal protection regulations and this is why fulfilling all the criteria for these licenses is not trivial (and shouldn't be). One very important and legally difficult to grasp word that entered the new Swiss animal protection law is the protection of an animal's dignity, where possible. I still think its a shame that the farmer's lobby managed to get exempted from some of these points, but also the legislators themselves have trouble defining the dignity of an animal, since many people have different interpretations of this value (e.g. farmers vs scientists vs vegetarians). If I understood correctly though, one of the consequences of this law means that breeding certain breeds of animals will become illegal in Switzerland, and I warmly welcome this. I always considered it ridiculous that for example deleting a gene in a mouse necessitates a license ensuring that you thought of all (the obvious) consequences, while dog breeders are freely allowed to breed dogs that have trouble breathing or walking because of their deformed ("cute") anatomy. Not even mentioning what a lot of people do to their animals behind closed doors. And I'm not only talking about obvious abuse but also about overfeeding and the like.
BTW one interesting interpretation of such laws protecting the dignity of animals goes so far (if applied literally) that living in the wild may actually be illegal in some circumstances, because we willingly accept that a lot of the animals will be killed because of natural predators, lack of food etc... You know, survival of the fittest at its best.
Anyways, I welcome such stringent laws as long as they allow medical research to progress and I think it is very important that they are controlled by highly trained personal that understand how science works. As far as I can tell ,this is working quite well here in Switzerland. I have actually no idea what the legal situation is in Luxembourg, I should look it up at some point though.