[Ethical evaluation of animal experiments: theory and practice]

The "ethical justifiability" of animal experiments is a requirement that has its origin in the 18th century and that has been established in relevant EU- as well as national legislation. On principal, this requirement is to be met through a well-founded explanation of the indispensability of the experiment and a weighing of the animal suffering against the relevance of the expected results. This article investigates from the animal welfare point of view the practical implementation of these conditions with the evaluation of applications for granting a licence for animal experiments as required by the German Animal Welfare Law and the examination of ethical aspects of applications for funding of research that is carried out by the European Commission. The deficits identified for both cases have various causes. These are: unsatisfactory formal and practical basic conditions, the inadequate information content of many applications as well as the unbalanced composition and lacking decision-making powers of the evaluating bodies. The lack of any quality control for the animal experiments and for the evaluation process as a whole and its single components until now have prevented a reform of the schemes in place.