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This paper argues about the ethical implications of using animals as models for human medicine development. This reflection adopts an intermediate stand between the extreme positions of condemning all research with animals, considering it irrelevant, and that of exaggerating and promoting research with animals as models for human diseases. Our stand considers that in the current scientific state, research with animals is necessary for adjusting to the moral imperative of curing and preventing human diseases, but methods for replacing and reducing the number of animals as well as diminishing their suffering must be sought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has as goal to analyze the ethics of the care and use of experimental biomodels known as "laboratory animals". It does not pretend to establish a unique model, but to describe the items to be considered by institutions which produce, maintain and use laboratory animals for academic and/or productive purposes, in order to establish an institutional program for the care and use of animals with the highest scientist, technical and ethical standards. In the same way, it reviews the public perception on the topic and the ethical concerns about the use of laboratory animals in scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]