RDS has made clear its support for the concept and practice of systematic reviews. These can help inform how animal studies may be improved and interpreted for the benefit of human health.

Unfortunately, systematic reviews are not a panacea. Some of the published systematic reviews have been so highly selective that their findings had limited relevance, as discussed on a previous blog entry. In other cases animal data is too diverse to make the reviews meaningful. And for much basic research, the objective is not to predict the outcomes of human trials, but to discover new knowledge, whether relevant to humans, animals or the environment.

For these reasons, RDS unfortunately cannot support the current e-petition to the Prime Minister by the organisation known as SABRE. This petition would require, amongst other things, that each licence application includes references to systematic reviews of existing relevant studies. This is simply not practical. How can an application for a new piece of work make reference to a non-existent systematic review?

RDS will be engaging in a number of ways during 2008 in the debate about how to improve experimental design and encourage systematic reviews. It’s a shame a little more thought had not gone into the wording of what could otherwise have been a sensible proposal.