Laboratory Animal Law in the United States: Past, Present and Future

Paul Locke

Associate Professor, Environmental Health and Engineering
,
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Laboratory animal law in the United States is non-traditional, interdisciplinary, occasionally counterintuitive – and controversial. This presentation examines the federal laws, regulations, policies and practice of laboratory animal law, describes how these pieces knit together as a system, explores short-comings and most importantly, looks to the future. Right now, laboratory animal law is a system that was put into place to solve a mid-20th century problem. To best serve the public’s needs, to realize the full potential of biomedical research and science, and to better protect the health of human and non-human animals, laboratory animal law must evolve and lawyers must ignite and manage that change. A necessary first step is to drive the transition away from animal models to emerging technologies such as organs-on-a-chip, computational toxicology and other techniques that do not use non-human animals.

The accompanying paper will be released Early 2023.

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