Those who now experiment on living creatures say alternative methods may eventually diminish their reliance on animals |
Despite increasing and frequently violent protests by animal rights activists, biomedical researchers throughout the United States say they have no intention of curtailing their use of whole-animal subjects as they deem them necessary.
For these researchers--even as the development of such alternatives to animal subjects as cell cultures and computer models is on the rise--the issue remains not a matter of morals, but of scientific merit.
Scientists targeted during the recent World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week (Ron Kaufman, The Scientist, May 31, 1993, page 1), for example, vow to continue to use animals in their studies because, they say, it is simply the most scientifically viable method of conducting their investigations.
This is not to say that these researchers constitute a body whose opinions on the subject ...
