Last update - 00:00 15/01/2007
Council decides to allow experiments on animals for teaching purposes
By Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz Correspondent
The Council on Animal Experimentation on Sunday approved extending the status quo on allowing animal experimentation by lecturers for teaching purposes.
The decision is still not official because the vote was held without a quorum, and it will be brought before the council for a revote in about six weeks.
Experimentation for teaching purposes, unlike experiments for research, adds no new knowledge and is only done to illustrate known principles to students.
As reported in Haaretz on Sunday, several alternatives to animal experimentation for this purpose exist. In most American medical schools, simulations and videos are used instead of live animals. In Israel, however, unknown numbers of animals still undergo procedures and are killed for this reason at colleges and universities.
According to the proposal brought before the council, experiments for teaching purposes are to be approved by internal committees at the institutions.
The amendment to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Law from 1994 mandates that if a non-harmful alternative exists, the lecturer must use it and not a live animal. The internal committee will be required to ensure that no other alternative exists.
"The decision leaves the cat to guard the cream," attorney Ehud Peleg, the legal advisor to Noah, the umbrella organization for animal rights groups, and its representative on the council, said.
"These are the remains of the attitude that considers academic freedom to be above everything else, even above the law, which states that if an alternative to animal experimentation exists, the experiment will be prohibited," he added.
Council chairman, Professor Ehud Ziv, said, "The people who know better about teaching and alternatives to experimentation are at the university," and called the decision-making process "excellent."
"The moment you want to determine an alternative, the experts in teaching are those who should decide," Ziv said. "The search for alternatives has proved itself very well," Ziv added. "The courses using animals have decreased by 90 percent compared to three years ago."