12
Jun
Swiss Court Bans Primate Brain Experiments
- posted at 2:55 PM
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Two experiments to study rhesus macaques’ brains have been banned by a court in Zurich. The ban is being appealed and may yet be overturned, but hey, what a great story anyway! According to Nature News, the court ruled that “society was unlikely to see the benefits of the research during the three-year funding period approved, and thus the burden on the animals was not justified.” Swiss law, which I’ve praised before, requires society’s benefits to be weighed against the ‘burden’ on the animal before any experiments can take place. You may not know this (neither did I ‘til I just quizzed my main man on the ins-and-outs of vivisection, Alistair), but this is no different from UK law!
Sadly, in Britain claims that benefit will occur can be extremely vague and still get a rubber stamp from the government. You can see this in the 3 million experiments that take place every year despite all the scientific failings of vivisection. What also separates us Brits from the Swiss here though, is the time measured from doing the experiment, and when the ‘benefit’ is seen. So, in this case a “benefit” would have to be seen straight after carrying out the test, but done in the UK, vivisectors and scientists just need to indicate there may possibly be benefits far in the future. Fingers crossed the decision isn’t overturned…
Wonderful news about the ban!
Fingers crossed that whoever makes the decisions in Switzerland will have enough good sense to keep it that way.