In 2024, the UK RSCPA published a report entitled “Supporting Replacement in Academia: Exploring barriers around the acceptance and uptake of non-animal methods in science in UK Academia”.
You can downloadable here.
A detailed summary is available here.
Although progress has been made over the last decade in the development of non-animal methods (NAMs), there are still scientific and technological challenges to be overcome. But these are not the only obstacles. Sociocultural factors, linked to the way scientific research is done, hinder their acceptance and uptake.
This report has sought to highlight these factors as barriers to the use of NAMs, and to determine what drives the use of animals in academic research. It is based on a qualitative survey carried out in UK universities and medical schools with researchers and PhD students from all disciplines (32 in-depth interviews, including 8 PhD students).
11 key themes emerged, highlighting inertia factors such as the perceived safety of using animals to obtain results, the importance of knowledge acquired on the main animal models, ease of finding a position, and ongoing investment in animal infrastructures. Implementation of and commitment to the 3Rs is sometimes perceived as merely symbolic, both at institutional and researcher level. The 3Rs remain no more than “boxes to be ticked”, with people acting “as if they were making an effort”, without making a serious commitment to them.
Furthermore, the obstacles to developing and disseminating NAMs are the lack of dedicated training, the perception of the limitations of NAMs on a technical-scientific level (with the perception that all results will have to be validated on animal models for publication to be accepted in a good journal), the risk taken by researchers who go down this path in terms of the time required to acquire and perfect the technology, during which time they do not publish, in a context where publishing is essential to advance in a scientific career, particularly for young people. These factors make access to funding difficult, while the costs of developing NAMs and setting up the appropriate infrastructure (space, equipment, expertise and support) are considered high. Investing in NAMs requires institutional support and cannot be the choice of a single researcher.
The authors highlight the lack of communication and collaboration between those developing/using NAMs and those using animals. Dialogue between the two groups should be non-confrontational. The challenge is to share information, suggest potential alternatives, initiate collaborations and create discussion forums to disseminate information on the scientific contribution of NAMs.
A position often defended is that NAMs are not a replacement for animal use, but complementary methods, enabling more precise in vivo investigations in particular, and ultimately reducing animal use. They are also used to complement animal research, providing another way of answering a scientific question. There is a general lack of confidence in the feasibility of complete replacement: the importance of using a whole living organism, at least at one stage of research, is emphasized, especially in studies of complex physiological systems.
In this context, it is all the more important to assert the ethical imperative of replacement.
In the light of these observations, the authors draw up an outlook : researchers need to know which NAMs are particularly relevant to their work, and understand their value. They need to be able to use them with confidence, given the necessary infrastructure and support. The use of NAMs must fit in with established recognition structures in the academic world, with researchers able to publish NAM-derived data in high-impact journals and access funding.
