The biomedical community needs to ‘shift the balance’ to talk more about the benefits of using animals in research, EARA executive director, Kirk Leech, told the Spanish scientific community last week (see video 15mins).
In a speech at the XVI congress of the Spanish Society for Laboratory Animal Sciences (SECAL), he explained why it is now more important than ever to speak up about animal research, following the recent vote by the European Parliament for a phase-out of animal research.
Kirk said the sector had ‘dug itself into a bit of a hole’ by focusing too much on animal welfare and merely asking the public to trust us.
He said that EARA believed that a ‘hearts and minds’ approach was now needed, providing compelling stories about the success of animal research, such as in developing Covid vaccines, as well as the facts and figures about its benefits.
To mark the SECAL conference, EARA also released the latest in its #LetsTalkSciComm YouTube series with Lluis Montoliu of CNB-CSIC, Spain, sharing his reasons for using YouTube as a platform for communicating about complex genetics and rare disease research.
During the conference, Pilar Bringas, of EARA member Complutense University of Madrid also explained how (1hr 7mins in Spanish) it had worked together with EARA to improve its website including adding videos and pictures.