This conference examined a range of topics including the ability to improve laboratory animal welfare through regulation and other means, and how technological advances, such as CRISPR/Cas9, may impact the current legal framework.
Event Overview
At the end of January 2018, we convened key stakeholders at Harvard Law School to participate in a large conference on the evolving legal and social ramifications of laboratory animal research.
Partnering with the HLS Petrie-Flom Center and the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, we organized and hosted the full-day conference which featured extremely candid and open dialogue among parties that often don’t communicate directly or effectively with one another.
Several attendees commented that the event presented the most diverse range of viewpoints on the issue that they’d ever experienced in 30+ years of working in the field. This broad scope of speakers included the Deputy Administrator of APHIS (personally responsible for enforcing the Federal Animal Welfare Act), veterinarians, biomedical researchers from Harvard Medical School, as well as the Executive Director of the New England Anti-Vivisection Society and a Vice-President of PeTA.
The full agenda and videos of all the speakers can be viewed on Petrie Flom Center’s website.