The nation should allocate more funding to research alternatives to animal testing in drug development and seek to replace it with human testing, animal rights advocates said yesterday.
The suggestion was made at a hearing hosted by Democratic Progressive Party legislators Karen Yu (余宛如) and Wu Kun-yuh (吳焜裕) aimed at gathering ideas about how to reduce animal testing.
Taiwan uses more than 1 million live animals and 3 million animal embryos for scientific purposes each year, 22 percent of which are rodents, Council of Agriculture Animal Protection section chief Chiang Wen-chuan (江文全) said.
While a ban on animal testing for cosmetic products is to come into effect next year, the nation needs to develop more techniques to replace all such testing, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Deputy Director Lin Pin-pin (林嬪嬪) said.
Investigating alternatives to animal testing has become a global trend, especially as many scientists have expressed doubt over the concordance of animal responses to human responses, said Humane Society of the US chief scientific officer Andrew Rowan, who was invited to give a speech at the meeting.
Rowan encouraged Taiwan to keep up with the trend and suggested that it take certain actions first, including legislating the minimization of animal testing and setting up a replacement, reduction and refinement (3R) promotion center.
Many attendees echoed his view on the necessity of a 3R center.
The center should serve as a platform across government agencies and evaluate the efficiency of animal tests, Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan chief executive Chu Tseng-hung (朱增宏) said, lamenting the lack of such evaluation in Taiwan.
The nation should gradually replace animal testing with human-based research, he said, but added that the transition should be carried out scientifically and practically.
While the National Laboratory Animal Center supports the establishment of a 3R center, animal testing could only be substituted if the alternative is proven to be efficient, center deputy director Wang Chi-kuang (王繼廣) said.
To promote legislation and research, the Chinese Taipei Society of Laboratory Animal Sciences is to file proposals with the council by the end of this year, society vice chairperson Fang Mei-tso (方美佐) said.
Yu said that she and her fellow legislators would push the Executive Yuan to set up a cross-agency platform for the establishment of a 3R center, which should also explore business opportunities for laboratory alternatives.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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