The HSUS Honors David Morton as the 2002 Russell & Burch Award Recipient

Dr. David Morton was recently honored at The HSUS's Russell & Burch Award ceremony, held at the Fourth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, for his extensive work in the development and promotion of refinement techniques that minimize pain and distress experienced by research animals.

Dr. Morton serves as a Professor and Head of the Department of Biomedical Science and Biomedical Ethics at the University of Birmingham in England. He also serves as the Director of the University's Unit of Biomedical Services, which provides laboratory animal management services. Through his research, writings, and participation in alternatives conferences and other professional activities, Dr. Morton has been one of the world's leading figures in the field of refinement since the 1980s.

Specifically, Dr. Morton developed scoring systems for assessing the impact of experimental procedures on the welfare of laboratory animals. These systems not only provide an overall measure of the impact of experiments in terms of animal suffering and harm, but they are also used to identify early clinical signs that reliably predict experimental outcomes, such as death. Once identified, these early signs (e.g., changes in body temperature) can often be substituted for the standard endpoints, which typically is death. This process thereby allows the termination of experiments before the onset of severe pain, distress, or death and spares the animals the associated suffering. Such refinements have come to be known as "humane endpoints", a field that Dr. Morton has pioneered.

The HSUS presents the Russell & Burch Award to scientists who have made outstanding contributions toward the advancement of alternative methods in the areas of biomedical research, testing, or higher education. Alternative methods are those that can replace or reduce the use of animals in specific procedures, or refine procedures so that animals experience less pain or suffering. Candidates for the award are judged on the scientific merit of their contribution to the alternatives field and on their professional commitment to this field.

The award, which carries a $5,000 prize, is named in honor of William M. Russell and Rex L. Burch, the scientists who formulated the Three Rs approach of replacement, reduction, and refinement. The award is bestowed every three years at the World Congresses on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, which this year was held in New Orleans and was hosted primarily by The HSUS.

CAAT Presents the Henry Spira Award for "Ethical Activism" to Andrew Rowan

Andrew Rowan, whose science-based advocacy on behalf of laboratory animals has won him respect in both scientific and animal protection circles, received the second Henry Spira Award from The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT). The award was presented earlier this evening (Monday, Aug. 12) at the Fourth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences in New Orleans.

Currently senior vice president for Research, Education and International Issues at the Humane Society of the United States, Rowan serves as one of the leading advocates for animals in the world. At the same time, he maintains his affiliations as adjunct professor at the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, senior fellow at the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy, and CAAT faculty member.

Rowan is known in the animal protection community for his insistence upon "symmetrical dialogue," by bringing both animal advocates and scientists together to work for progress. He is the author of numerous papers and fact sheets, and he is legendary for insisting that animal advocacy be fact-based, not emotionally driven. Under his leadership, the HSUS launched a campaign to eliminate pain and distress in laboratory animals by 2020.

Trained at Cape Town, South Africa, and Oxford, Rowan holds bachelor's degrees in chemistry and general physiology and a doctorate in biochemistry. He began his career at the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (FRAME), a British organization devoted to the promotion of alternative methods. Prior to his work at the HSUS, Rowan served as chairman of the Department of Environmental Studies at the Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine and director of Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy.

Among other awards, Rowan received the Russell and Burch Award for contributions to the alternatives field from the HSUS in 1996 and the CAAT Recognition Award in 1992.

CAAT established the award in 1999 in memory of Henry Spira, himself a tireless activist on behalf of animals until his death in 1998 at the age of 71. Spira, who was largely responsible for launching the animal rights movement in the United States in the mid-1970s, devoted his life to fighting injustice. He is well known for a string of successful campaigns against the use of animals in medical experiments and product safety tests.

Rowan was responsible for suggesting the criteria to be used for this award, three years ago, when the first recipient was selected. Those criteria, established by Spira himself, emphasize credibility, dialogue and reasonable goals-all hallmarks of Rowan's own career.

In his remarks at the award ceremony, Alan M. Goldberg, director of the Center, told World Congress participants that Rowan is Spira's disciple in every way. "Andrew inspires respect because he always treats stakeholders with respect. He gets his friends in the animal protection community to marshal their facts, think rationally, and set achievable goals. He gets the scientific community to listen-and to begin talking about 'when' and 'how' we develop alternatives, not 'if.' That's how Henry did business, and it's how you achieve real progress."

The first recipient of the Henry Spira Award was Christine Stevens, founder of the Animal Welfare Institute.

Henry Spira's efforts led to the establishment of CAAT in 1981. Since then, CAAT has supported the development of alternatives that refine methods to make them less painful or stressful, reduce the number of animals necessary for a particular experiment, or replace them with a non-whole-animal method.

CAAT Honors British Scientist for Efforts to Eliminate Pain in Lab Animals

The world's leading expert on identifying and managing pain in laboratory animals was honored earlier this evening (Monday, Aug. 12) at the Fourth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences in New Orleans. The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) presented the 2002 CAAT Recognition Award to Paul Flecknell.

The award, presented at every World Congress, honors an individual (or organization) who has made an outstanding contribution to the development of alternative methods or the field of in vitro science. Flecknell was chosen from a list of international nominees for his "unceasing dedication to the identification and elimination of pain in laboratory animal experiments."

For more than 25 years, Paul Flecknell has attempted to make life less painful for laboratory animals by bringing them better analgesia and anesthesia. Today, his work is cited in nearly every paper that discusses pain in laboratory animals.

Currently director of the Comparative Biology Centre at the University of Newcastle, he qualified from Cambridge Veterinary School in 1976 and worked for a year at the University of Bristol as a F.A.B. Scholar. He then joined the Medical Research Council's Clinical Research Centre at Harrow, where he was responsible for animal health and welfare in the research animal facility. During this period he completed his doctorate in neonatal physiology and developed his major interest in animal anesthesia and analgesia. He holds the Diploma in Laboratory Animal Science of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and is also a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia and the European College of Labaoratory Animal Medicine. He was appointed to a personal professorship in Laboratory Animal Science in 1997.

Today he is president of the Association of Veterinary Anaesthetists, vice-chairman of the editorial board of "Laboratory Animals," and a member of the editorial board of the "Veterinary Journal" and "Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia." He is a member of the board of both the British Veterinary Association Animal Welfare Foundation and the Doerenkamp and Zbinden Foundation. He is a member of the UK Home Office Animal Procedures Committee.

Flecknell was awarded the Livesey Medal by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1986 for work on anaesthesia and analgesia of laboratory animals, the GV-SOLAS Prize for Laboratory Animal Science and the Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation for Realistic Animal Protection in Scientific Research award in 1991, the Research Defence Society--SmithKline Beecham Laboratory Animal Welfare Prize in 1993 and the WARDS Refinement Project Award in 1996. In 1992 he visited Guelph as a Canadian Commonwealth Fellow, and in 1997 was elected an Honorary Associate of the British Laboratory Animal Veterinary Association.

In his remarks at the awards ceremony, CAAT director Alan M. Goldberg said that "no one had done more" to eliminate pain in laboratory animals.

"Through his sustained commitment to understanding the complex nature of pain in laboratory animals, and his unceasing efforts to find appropriate pain management, Paul Flecknell has made a major and lasting contribution to laboratory science," Goldberg said at the awards ceremony. "We must eliminate pain in animals if we seek to be humane; we must be humane if we expect to achieve excellence in our research. As Russell and Burch said, humane science is the best science."

Previous recipients of CAAT Recognition Awards include: Robert A. Scala, Herman B.W.M. Koeter, Andrew N. Rowan; Gerhard Zbinden, Per Ottar Seglen, Procter & Gamble Co., Avon Products Inc., Zeneca, and Michael F.W. Festing. For more information about their achievements, visit the CAAT website at http://caat.jhsph.edu.

Since 1981, CAAT has supported the development of alternatives that refine methods to make them less painful or stressful, reduce the number of animals necessary for a particular experiment, or replace them with a non-whole animal method. In 2001, CAAT launched a new Refinement Program Project focused on the identification, assessment, and elimination of pain and distress in laboratory animals.

Leon Bruner Honored for Promotion of Humane Safety Testing Methods

The Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF) honored Dr. Leon H. Bruner with its William A. Cave Award for 2002, in recognition of his outstanding efforts to promote the development, validation and use of humane alternatives for product safety testing in industry and acceptance of such technology by national and international regulatory agencies.

Bruner currently serves as Vice-President of Environment, Health and Safety for the Gillette Corporation and is a frequent member of committees and regulatory commissions involved with the development, validation and adoption of in vitro alternatives to a wide range of traditionally animal-based product safety testing programs.

Prior to joining Gillette, Bruner served as Senior and Principle Scientist for both the United States and European research centers of the Proctor and Gamble Company. He was responsible for managing international validation studies of specific in vitro alternatives and furthering Proctor and Gamble's efforts to replace the use of animals in product safety testing. He has more than 45 publications related to the field of alternatives to animal testing and has participated in scores of invited lectures and committee assignments on that topic.

ARDF presented Bruner with the award at the Fourth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences in New Orleans, Louisiana. The award, which carries a $5,000 prize, is named in honor of the late William A. Cave, President of the American Anti-Vivisection Society from 1978 to 1990. Cave established a special grants program for non-animal alternatives research, which later became the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation.