§ Mr. Galeasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Government intend to give financial support to the work of the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments.
§ Mr. BrittanYes. The Government are to make a substantial grant to FRAME to further its research into the use of alternatives to live animals in research. Three projects are to be funded, for three years. The first of these is a major new project to examine the use of human tissue cultures instead of animals in medical research and toxicity testing. The second project will support existing FRAME research into the feasibility of an international validation scheme for in vitro alternatives. The third will study the possibility of establishing a database on experience with tissue culture techniques to bring together all the available information from scientific literature and make it readily available to scientists.
The Government's objective in supporting FRAME is to promote a significant contribution to efforts being made in many laboratories to reduce the numbers of live animals being used in scientific procedures. Financial support for its work is a pledge of the Government's commitment to the promotion of alternatives to live animals whenever practicable.