Basel Declaration

The signatories commit to accepting greater responsibility in animal experiments and to intensive cooperation with the public in the form of a dialogue with prejudice.

With their Basel Declaration, researchers are seeking to achieve a more impartial approach to scientific issues by the public and a more trusting and reliable cooperation with national and international decision makers.

[3] To make their motivation and methods more comprehensible to the public and the decision makers, the researchers aim to cooperate more closely with politicians, the media and schools in the future and to give greater importance to the communication of science.

The authors of the Basel Declaration acknowledge the need for greater discussion of animal experiment issues in public and also of the risks of research approaches and possible misuse of new technological developments.

The initial signatories to the Basel Declaration see the tendency to restrict animal experiments, especially in the field of basic research, as a major risk.

In many cases, species higher on the evolutionary scale in animal experiments can be replaced by the use of simpler organisms bred by means of gene technology, such as fruit flies, laboratory worms or fish.

Research in non-human primates has led to the development of crucial medical treatments, such as vaccines against poliomyelitis and hepatitis (jaundice), as well as to improved drug safety thanks to indispensable contributions to the basic principles of physiology, immunology, infectious diseases, genetics, pharmacology, reproduction biology and neuroscience.

We predict an increased need for research using non-human primates in the future, e.g. for personalized medicine and neurodegenerative diseases in an aging society.

This continuing need is also reflected in the EU Directive of 2010 (2010 /63/EU) on animals used for scientific purposes, in which it is recognized that research in non-human primates will remain irreplaceable in the foreseeable future.