Oct 08, 2025 Alternatives to Laboratory Animals: The Evolution of a Goal and Its Eventual Fulfilment
Wellbeing International has published several articles in its newsletters highlighting encouraging advances in replacing animals in laboratory research. WBI recently attended the Thirteenth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences in Rio de Janeiro. The talks at that event predicted significant progress in the field over the next decade. For someone who has been promoting the alternatives concept for 49 years, the meeting was a transformative experience, and it feels fitting to reflect on the timeline leading up to the Rio Congress.
The first World Congress (1993) was the vision of Dr. Alan Goldberg from Johns Hopkins University. Goldberg asked Dr. Bert Van Zutphen of Utrecht University to be a co-organizer, and the second Congress (1996) was held in Utrecht. The third (1999) was held in Bologna, and I had the honor to host the fourth, which was held in New Orleans (2002). Since then, World Congresses have taken place every two to three years. The 14th World Congress is set to be held in Seoul, South Korea, in August 2027.
While most people now involved in using animals in laboratory research probably know of the three Rs—Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement—that were first outlined in a 1959 book by William Russell and Rex Burch, there is now a history of the concept written by the late Dr. John Parascandola, a professional medical historian. Dr. Parascandola describes the early history of the book project initiated by the British charity, the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (now commonly known as UFAW), and the very positive role played by Sir Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine (for his discovery, with Frank Burnet, of acquired immunological tolerance and its importance for transplant medicine). In a 1972 book, The Hope of Progress—which included the text of a 1969 talk on animal research—Medawar remarked that support for animal research does “not imply that we are for evermore, and in increasing numbers, to enlist animals in the scientific service of man. I think that the use of animals on the present scale is a temporary episode in biological and medical history, and that its peak will be reached in ten” years – or perhaps sooner.”
As data on laboratory animal use from several developed countries demonstrates (see an earlier WellBeing International newsletter), Medawar was prescient. Laboratory animal use in many industrial countries peaked in the mid-1970s and has fallen steadily (by as much as 70-75%). A short upward blip was driven by the ability to create defined genetic variants of laboratory mice starting around 1995. However, when the genetically modified mice did not produce the expected discoveries and insights, the number of laboratory animals being used began to fall again.
At the 13th World Congress in Rio, plenary speakers explained how they are using a variety of new in vitro and in silico technologies to achieve new understanding and develop therapies more quickly and with greater relevance to human biology. Dr. Nicole Kleinstreuer delivered the final keynote of the conference. She shared her new role at the US National Institutes of Health, where she heads up the Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application (ORIVA). As head of ORIVA, she is expected to guide a shift away from animal research toward developing, validating, and implementing human-based research technologies like organoids, organs-on-a-chip, and computational models. The NIH, the EPA, and the FDA have now caught up with and passed pro-alternative initiatives in the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia.
Medawar did not believe that biomedical research could eventually eliminate all animal experiments. Still, he deserves to be remembered for his role in encouraging the project that led to the Russell and Burch volume and for the foresight he demonstrated in 1969. For more details, please visit the Purdue University Press website and download (for free) a PDF copy of Dr. John Parascandola’s history of the alternatives concept.
The 14th World Congress on Alternatives in the Life Sciences will be held in 2026 in Seoul, South Korea, from 15-19 August 2027.