Free Web Resources on Alternatives

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following list of free sites. ALTWEB (Alternatives to Animal Testing on the Web) http://altweb.jhsph.edu. Created to serve as a gateway to alternatives news, ...
March 2004

Lab Animal

Volume 33, No. 3

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Free Web Resources on Alternatives Compiled by Thomas M. Donnelly, DVM Access to many online databases for alternatives searches requires a paid subscription and these fees may be expensive for small or not-for-profit institutions. The author provides a list of free sites that can be used to fulfill the legal requirement for an alternatives search.

Many countries, including the United States, Canada, and European Union member states, require that researchers complete a comprehensive search for possible alternatives before beginning some or all research involving animals. The University of California Santa Barbara website (http://research. ucsb.edu/connect/acc/alternvs.html) describes the US legal requirements for consideration of alternatives (under the Animal Welfare Act and the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals), and defines the meaning of the term ‘alternatives’. Access to the internet makes it easier to meet the dual challenges of finding alternatives to animal testing with comprehensive searches while keeping current with related information. Although there are numerous databases available (e.g., AGRICOLA, CAB, MEDLINE, TOXLINE, EMBASE, BIOSIS, Zoological Record, Life Sciences, PsycINFO, ASFA, Pascal, SciSearch, Current Contents), only MEDLINE (or PubMed) is available to users without a fee. Although some fees are inexpensive, others are costly. Many small not-for-profit institutes, or state or city colleges, cannot afford the online fee to search the databases just listed. Therefore, to encourage researchers and institutions to search, at a minimum, two or three databases to provide information on in vitro and other alternatives to animal testing, I have compiled the following list of free sites. ALTWEB (Alternatives to Animal Testing on the Web) http://altweb.jhsph.edu Created to serve as a gateway to alternatives news, information, and resources on the internet and beyond, Altweb has five practical goals: • To provide scientists and others with a means for conducting a complete and appropriate alternatives search from one central, easily accessible location; • To serve as a central reference point for alternatives information, publications, databases, calendars, and other resources; • To support the creation and maintenance of new alternative resources as needed, when no other organization can/will do so; • To promote the use of alternatives resources by publicizing them on the site and through email or other outreach; and • To facilitate communication and collaboration among members of the alternatives community, in particular those who work in database or information management. NAL Animal Use Alternatives Thesaurus http://agclass.nal.usda.gov/altrntvs/index.htm Produced by the US National Agricultural Library (NAL), this site provides a classification of terminology relating to alternatives and animal welfare, constituting a valuable resource in harmonizing the terms used in this field.

Donnelly is affiliated with the Kenneth S. Warren Institute, Ossining, NY. Please address correspondence to the author at [email protected].

ALTBIB: Bibliography on Alternatives to the Use of Live Vertebrates in Biomedical Research and Testing http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/altbib.html Produced by experts at the US National Library of Medicine from MEDLARS 1

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searches, ALTBIB is an online bibliography of published alternatives presented as a searchable database and as individual issues that can be browsed. Animal Welfare Institute http://www.awionline.org/lab_animals/index.htm This link provides access to the following databases: • Environmental Enrichment for Primates: Annotated Database of Environmental Enrichment and Refinement of Husbandry for Nonhuman Primates; • Database of Refinement of Housing and Handling Conditions and Environmental Enrichment for Laboratory Animals: Rodents, Rabbits, Cats, Dogs, Ferrets, Farm Animals, Horses, Birds, Fishes, Amphibians and Reptiles; and • Refinement and Environmental Enrichment for All Laboratory Animals. Viktor Reinhardt and Annie Reinhardt at the Animal Welfare Institute maintain these databases, which are searchable by keywords. ICCVAM (The Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods)/NICEATM (The National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods) http://iccvam.niehs.nih.gov/home.htm ICCVAM unites representatives from 15 federal agencies that generate or use information from toxicological test methods to support human health or environmental risk assessments. ICCVAM is responsible for the coordination of the development and review of various alternative toxicological methods. NICEATM provides operational support to ICCVAM. The two groups advocate the harmonization of test methods nationally and internationally. This site provides links to the participating agencies and reports on their activities in reviewing alternative test methods. Invitroderm http://www.invitroderm.com Jane Huggins, PhD (Toxicology Consulting Services, Plainsboro, NJ) developed this not-for-profit website to display information about alternatives to skin irritation/corrosion testing in animals. The site currently contains approximately 360 abstracts about this topic from peer-reviewed scientific journals. Netherlands Centre Alternatives to Animal Use (NCA) http://www.nca-nl.org The NCA database is the central point in the Netherlands for coordinating research and distributing information on alternatives to animal experiments. The Dutch Platform on Alternatives to Animal Experiments originally funded projects, but the current funding agency is the Program Committee on Alternatives to Animal Experiments of the Dutch Health and Research Council (Dutch acronym: ZON). 2

Lab Animal

March 2004

Nordic Information Centre for Alternative Methods (NICA) http://www.cctoxconsulting.a.se/nica.htm NICA provides information about alternatives to animal experiments. The Scandinavian Society for Cell Toxicology sponsors the centre. The MEIC in vitro database is available on this website. Multicentre Evaluation of In Vitro Cytotoxicity (MEIC) http://www.cctoxconsulting.a.se/meic.htm The MEIC study is an international program to evaluate the relevance and reliability of in vitro tests for predicting acute systemic toxicity. The MEIC database contains data on selected chemicals from a large number of in vitro toxicity test systems and information on methodology, while the MEMO database (MEIC monographs on time-related human lethal blood concentrations) contains published and unpublished human toxicity data for the same substances. The Norwegian Reference Centre for Laboratory Animal Science & Alternatives (NORINA) http://oslovet.veths.no The Laboratory Animal Unit, Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, Oslo, has compiled an English-language database of audiovisuals and other alternatives for use in the biological sciences. The primary purpose of the database is to offer an overview of possible alternatives or supplements to the use of animals in student teaching, at all levels from schools to university. NORINA has a separate TextBase for textbooks addressing laboratory animal science. TextBase http://oslovet.veths.no/TextBase Karina Smith, Laboratory Animal Unit, Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, compiled this database of books on laboratory animal science and the ‘3Rs’. It now contains 725 records that give bibliographical details and in some cases an indication of contents. ZEBET (Center for Documentation and Evaluation of Alternative Methods to Animal Experiments; Zentralstelle zur Erfassung und Bewertung von Ersatz und Ergänzungsmethoden zum Tierversuch) http://www.dimdi.de/en/db/dbinfo/index.htm In 2000, Germany’s Federal Institute for Consumer Health Protection and Veterinary Medicine put the ZEBET database online in English via DIMDI (Deutsches Institut für Medizinische Dokumentation und Information), or the German Institute for Medical Documentation and Information. ZEBET is a German full-text database of alternative methods to animal experiments, now available in English. It has more than 4,000 bibliographical references to about 300 replacement, refinement, and reduction alternatives in all fields of biomedical research. The record for each method includes an expert analysis of the method and the animal-based one that it replaces. This valuable information is not often available from most online databases. The

March 2004

ZEBET Database, hosted by DIMDI (indexed under AnimAltZEBET), may be searched free of charge either alone or simultaneously with MEDLINE and TOXLINE. There are a maximum number of users supported at any one time, and the database denies access once this limit is reached. Users should also note, particularly if they are in other time zones, that the service is unavailable daily between 5:00 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. Central European Time (CET = +6 hours EST) and on one specified day per month between 6:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. CET. DIMDI is less useful than other sites for free MEDLINE searches, because the no-fee interface is slow, not very user-friendly, and does not seem to offer additional features as found elsewhere.

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