Home » Bulletin 2005
New Netherlands foundation launched
A new organisation has been launched to explain the importance of animal research to the Dutch public.
After a lengthy preparation, the Dutch Foundation for Information about Animal Research launched its website on May 15. The decision to set up this new organisation was taken exactly two years previously at a conference in Eindhoven titled: "Animal research in the news, just one side of the coin".
"The first step”, says Frans van den Mosselaar, secretary of the board, “was to investigate the information situation in the Netherlands. The results were very disappointing. Most of the information was given by animal right groups. The government only publishes general data about the numbers of animals used, the degree of discomfort and the general purpose of the tests. Universities and pharmaceutical companies give hardly any information and express themselves in very general terms. The only well-covered issue was the 3 R policy and the search for alternatives."
Recent surveys by the Foundation for Animal Protection showed that a small majority of the Dutch does not support animal research and a large majority does not support animal research for any purpose if the laboratory animals suffer great discomfort. "It was very clear to us that the public support for animal research is diminishing quickly, mainly because no one takes the responsibility to tell the whole story", said van den Mosselaar. "One of the most difficult things in the past two years was to find support for the initiative. Major patient organisations are afraid to jeopardise their fundraising if they support our initiative. Some of them explicitly state that they preferably use their research funds for studies which do not include animal research."
However, three organisations were prepared to propose candidates for the first board of the Foundation.
The VSOP, the Dutch Genetic Alliance. This is an umbrella organization of about sixty national, disease-linked, parent and patient organizations, most of them concerned with genetic and/or congenital disorders.
The FMWV. The Federation of Medical Scientific Organisations, representing about 50 scientific organizations varying from hematology to tissue engineering and molecular biology.
The NVP: the Dutch Association for Laboratory Animal Science.
With these organisations on board it was soon possible to generate support from others. On the website are testimonials from the Minister of Education and Science, the Minister of Healthcare, the Minister of Agriculture, the Royal Dutch Academy of Science, the Aids Society, the Kidney Foundation and others.
For the website much information is used that already was published by the Research Defense Society, the Coalition for Medical Progress, the Foundation for Biomedical Research and the European Biomedical Research Association, although it is tailored to the Dutch situation. For example, the web site describes a Dutch development in hepatology, the bio-artificial liver recently developed by the University of Amsterdam, using a small reactor filled with liver cells of a specified pathogen-free pig. Under the Dutch law on xenotransplantation the artificial liver could not be tested in the Netherlands, so Dutch researchers went to Italy and successfully kept 13 patients alive and healthy until liver became available for transplantation. The site also contains a description of the compulsory safety tests for new medicines, including details about the type of tests and the exact numbers and species that are used.
The priorities for the Dutch Foundation now are consolidating the financial situation for at least three years, preparation of educational material and the formation of a speakers pool. Their website can be found at: http://www.informatiedierproeven.nl