The student shall achieve knowledge on animal research and demonstrate that they can apply this knowledge in a new context, for example when planning own experiments or when evaluating or give input to plans of animals experiments. They must achieve knowledge necessary and useful when they are performing procedures in practice or evaluate suggested practical solutions.

They must be capable of evaluating common practice on light of new knowledge about alternative ways to do animal experiments. This includes methods that reduce negative impact on the animals (refinement), means that improve the conditions for the animals (refinement), planning and designing experiments to optimize knowledge output with the use of as few animals as possible (reduction) and use alternatives to animals whenever they are available (replacement).

The course shall cover the core module of Mattilsynets and the EU-directives (2010/63) demands to theoretical training for persons performing procedures (function A) and designing experiments (function B).

Species specific topics are covered in LAS302 (mammals) and LAS303 (fish)

The aim is to give the students an introduction to central topics in LAS and make them available to apply this when panning and performing own experiments.

LAS 301 covers:

• Laws, regulations and ethics on the use of animals in research
• Health hazards in the animal facility
• Animal welfare and handling techniques
• Anesthesia, and Euthanasia
• Humane endpoints
• Planning, designing and literature search
• Alternatives to use of animals
• Ethical application in FOTS

After the education the students shall have achieved the following learning outcome.

• Know the national laws and regulations, conditions, demands and application for animal experiments
• Know how to apply for animal experiments in FOTS
• Identify and discuss central dilemmas and different views on the use of animals in research.
• Identify health hazards in the animals facility and actions to prevent health hazards
• Define Humane endpoints and suggest how they can be implemented in a specific experiments
• Know how the most common, minimal invasive procedures can influence animals and experiments and how to best avoid bias of such procedures.
• Know the principles of general anesthesia and how anesthesia can influence animals and experiments and know how best to control this.
• Know and describe the most common methods of euthanasia of research animals and how they influence animal welfare and experiments.
• Know the most common experimental designs, and how this influence internal and external validity of the experiments, how to reduce noise/variation and how to design experiments to get as much information of each animals as possible
• Know the principles of the 3Rs, why they are important both from a scientific and ethical perspective. Further, know how to find information relevant for implementing 3R in a specific experiment.

The course focuses on general issues important when animals are used in research. Specific examples from mammals or fish are used for illustration

• Litterature/pensum (approx. 400 pages)
• Tradisjonal lectures
• E-learning
• Demonstrations
• Quiz
• Case discussions

All lectures are mandatory

Case discussion

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