title: Acceptance of animal research in our science community.
abstract: Animal research is debated highly controversial, as evident by the "Stop Vivi-section" initiative in 2015. Despite widespread protest to the initiative by researchers, no data is available on the European medical research community's opinion towards animal research. In this single-center study, we investigated this question in a survey of students and staff members at the Medical University of Vienna. A total of 906 participants responded to the survey, of which 82.8% rated the relevance of animal research high and 62% would not accept a treatment without prior animals testing. Overall, animal research was considered important, but its communication to the public considered requiring improvement.
authors.affiliation: CD Laboratory for the Restoration of Extremity Function, Department of Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; Department of Biomedical Research, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Konstantin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bergmeister
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Research, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Podesser
keywords: Animal research; Stop vivi-section; acceptance animal research; survey