MEDICAL RESEARCH : EU MOVES TO RESTRICT SCIENTIFIC TESTS ON PRIMATES.

For Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, the use of a limited number of primates remains inevitable for scientific tests in certain fields of research into serious illnesses. Dimas was speaking on the occasion of a public hearing on alternatives to tests on animals, on 13 February at the European Parliament.

But in doing so, the commissioner would not respond to the request of MEPs who, in September 2007, had urged him to profit from the revision of Directive 86/609/CEaconcerning the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes to "establish a schedule in view of replacing the use of all primates by other solutions in scientific experiments".

The proposal, announced for early April, will nonetheless result in "limiting their use to an absolute minimum," said the commissioner. European laboratories, particularly pharmaceutical, are known to use more than 10,000 primates every year for experiments. Some 26% of primate...