Who is talking about the benefits of lab animal research?

This week's post is a little different.   Last week at AALAS I noticed a fair number of booths of organizations that promote animal research. A question I had was, "why don't these booths get a lot of traffic?"   Of course they are usually tucked away in the farthest reaches of the giant exhibition hall, but it would seem under the current climate where the reproducibility of animal research is being questioned by everyone from the man on the street to Congress, we might want to pay attention.   So I thought it was about time to feature some web-based organizations that support animal research and furthermore have fabulous websites...

Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR).

FBR has been supporting animal research for a long time, and now has a new campaign called "Love Animals? Support Animal Research", designed to rebut the widely advertised view that researchers are faceless people in white coats who don't care about animals.  Great logo!  The FBR website is easy to navigate - has a counter prominently displayed with the # of people diagnosed with Alzheimers, diabetes, etc. and features recent medical advances accomplished using animal research.  There are a lot of resources on this site, including a BLOG,  information on how animal research benefits pets, an archive of research articles and pages useful in case we need to give talks to schools, such as "myths vs. facts."

Americans for Medical Progress (AMP)

In addition to acting as a bountiful resource for information on the benefits of animal research, AMP sponsors the hugely successful biomedical research awareness day , organized by veterinary "Hayre Scholars" this has expanded from activities in a couple of dozen US vet schools to schools companies and hospitals around the world.  We hosted a BRAD in our hospital (courtesy of Logan France, one of the original Hayre Scholars) and I can say that this was a highly effective method for bringing the message to the public rather than expecting the public to come to us.  BRAD for next year is on April 19th 2018.

Understanding Animal Research

This site brings "openness" to a level not previously seen before in the animal research community by virtue of the UK initiative "concordat on openness in animal research".  The front page features a video about an interactive tour of 4 animal research facilities, including pictures of the animals (including a monkey with a headcap), surgery preparation, and animal husbandry technicians at work.  I particularly like the news timeline on the sidebar - most recently a link to the 2017 Nobel prize in science awarded for how genes control the body's circadian rhythm. A lot of really interesting and useful information for giving presentations here - including the top 20 prescribed medications and how animals were used to develop them (the most prescribed med is a beta blocker, in case you were wondering).  In fact this site contains a lot of novel ideas such as "ask me anything" features where researchers (the most recent one by an Alzheimers researcher) answer questions posed by the public on Reddit (and yes, I had to look up what Reddit is!) and links to videos of animals in research.   Well worth spending quite some time on this site.


Any other websites you know of that should be featured here?