A History of the Development of Alternatives to Animals in Research and Testing (New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond)

Growing public interest in animal welfare issues in recent decades has prompted increased attention to the efforts to develop alternative, nonanimal methods for use in biomedical research and product testing. In A History of the Development of Alternatives to Animals in Research and Testing, the first book-length study of the subject, John Parascandola traces the history of the concept of alternatives to the use of animals in research and testing in Britain and the United States from its beginnings until it had become firmly established in the scientific and animal protection communities by the end of the 1980s. This account of the history of alternatives is set within the context of developments within science, animal welfare, and politics. The book covers the key role played by animal welfare advocates in promoting alternatives, the initial resistance to alternatives on the part of many in the scientific community, the opportunity provided by alternatives for compromise and cooperation between these two groups, and the dominance of the “Three Rs”―reduction, refinement, and replacement.

John Parascandola, PhD, taught at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland, and served in the federal government as chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and as the historian for the Public Health Service. He is the author of four books including The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline, winner of the George Urdang Medal, and Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America, which won the George Pendleton Prize. He is currently an affiliate of the Department of History at the University of Maryland.