07:48
This study summarises a systematic review of 42 pieces of scientific literature, including virtually all animal welfare studies of captive tigers within circuses and zoos, published by 2023. After analysing the effects on each of the recognised five domains of animal welfare: nutrition, physical environment, health, behaviour and mental state, it was clear that circuses threaten the welfare of ...
06:16
Summarises welfare problems associated with the use of animals in film, television and advertising, with tourist exhibits, rides and activities, with circuses, marine mammal performances and dolphinaria, and with organised fighting of bears, cocks and particularly, dogs.
05:11
Harmful animal use in education and training remains widespread among life and health sciences disciplines. Humane teaching alternatives include ethically-sourced cadavers, models, mannequins, mechanical simulators, videos, computer and virtual reality simulations, and supervised clinical and surgical experiences. In this study we assessed and summarized studies of their educational effectivene...
02:58
A Clinical Skills Laboratory (CSL) is important for teaching surgical and medical skills to veterinary and medical students. Our recent article at https://AndrewKnight.info and summarised here, describes steps and considerations important during the establishment of a successful CSL, based on our experiences in establishing and directing the state of the art CSL at Ross University School of Vet...
09:57
Describes the use of animals within life and health sciences education, humane alternatives, and evidence concerning the educational effectiveness of humane teaching methods compared to harmful animal use.
09:47
Reviews the 3Rs – the Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of laboratory animal use. Key replacement examples include the use of structure-activity relationships and expert systems, cell cultures, the ‘human on a chip’, gene chips, and strategies to increase the predictivity and safety of human clinical trials. Key reduction examples include statistical calculation of sample sizes and internat...
05:17
Can animal experiments help cure depression? Unfortunately not, because animal research contributes little to human medical developments in this field. Here, we summarise our studies of the contributions of different forms of research to advances in depression understanding and treatment. Our full papers may be found at https://rebrand.ly/2020/MDD-Front-Psych, https://rebrand.ly/2020/MDD-PLoS-O...
04:44
Should we experiment on non-human primates (NHPs)? A short introduction to the harms and benefits of such research, and a call for greater protection of NHPs. Introduces our article: Carvalho, C., Gaspar, A., Knight, A., and Vicente, L. (2019). Ethical and scientific pitfalls concerning laboratory research with non-human primates, and possible solutions. Animals, 9(1), 12. https://www.mdpi.com/...
09:56
Systematic reviews have clearly demonstrated the limited human clinical and toxicological utility of animal experiments. This presentation briefly summarises this evidence, and reviews the reasons for the poor human predictivity of animal models. These include inherent differences between humans and animals, further exacerbated by the ways in which we use them – particularly, the stressful labo...
05:29
Reviews the numbers of animals used for scientific or educational purposes worldwide, and explores the main drivers of increasing use – greater use of genetically modified animals, and large-scale chemical testing programmes. Covers the most common species used, their sourcing, categories of use, and procedural invasiveness.
05:19
Summarises some major animal ethics theories, with a particular application to the killing and eating of animals. These include Peter Singer’s utilitarianism and Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights. In contrast, Rogen Scruton views pastoralist farming as a complex moral good, situated between the ‘evil’ extremes of intensive farming, and vegetarianism.
05:26
Summarises animal welfare concerns associated with the transport of animals by sea, air and land. The greatest concerns are associated with the sea transport of livestock from Australia. This is explored in some detail. Welfare problems include those caused by failure to eat during shipping, poor hygiene, crowding, disease, physical injuries, and heat stroke. Leading causes of death are summari...