Researchers from EARA member the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), Berlin, Germany, have made a compelling plea for the use of animals in biomedical research.
In a series of infographics on MDC’s website, 39 leading scientists gave their personal endorsement of the necessity of animals in their fields of research.
Their action came amid protests from the biomedical community that the Green Party in Berlin was contributing to the "considerable delay in requested research projects" as the city's Animal Experiments Commission had not been in operation since September.
“If our society wishes better cancer treatments to be developed, mouse experiments are unavoidable,” said Prof. Thomas Blankenstein, of the Molecular Immunology and Gene Therapy Lab.
While Dr Agnieszka Rybak-Wolf, head of Technology Plaform Organoids, said: “Before more complex in vitro models are developed, many scientific can only be addressed using vertebrate animals – particularly when it comes to the development of new drugs and vaccines.”
