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News from EARA

This page contains all the news outputs from EARA, including press releases and videos, EARA policy and news briefings, plus opinion pieces and significant media articles.

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Largest robotic surgical training centre in the world opens in Belgium

Bob Tolliday

Apr 23, 2019
1 min

Largest robotic surgical training centre in the world opens in Belgium

Orsi Academy, the largest robotically assisted training centre found anywhere in the world has opened its new campus in Melle, Belgium. The EARA member company trains more than 700 surgeons each year in minimal invasive techniques developed to reduce pain, blood loss and time of recovery in humans after an operation. Every surgeon starts training on a simulator, then using chicken and dog cadavers and lastly on live pigs that has been anesthetised. Orsi CEO, Prof. Dr. Alexand

We aren’t sadists, but we do animal research

Bob Tolliday

Jan 8, 2019
4 min

We aren’t sadists, but we do animal research

A group of young, ambitious Belgian scientists have had enough of standing by doing nothing while animal research is criticised in the media. This article by Liesbeth Aerts and Jeroen Aerts was translated from the original Dutch version published in De Standaard on 26 December 2016. ‘Sadists’, ‘bastards, ‘a gang of psychopaths’, ‘worse than Dutroux [serial killer and child molester]’ … a selection of the insults directed at animal researchers that appear each time the debate

Belgian researchers respond to misinformation about animal testing in an open letter

Bob Tolliday

Jan 8, 2019
1 min

Belgian researchers respond to misinformation about animal testing in an open letter

In response to recent misinformation about the use of animal experiments on the French-speaking television channel RTBF (9 November) in Belgium, a group of researchers from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), University of Liège, Université de Mons (UMons) and the University of Namur (UNAMUR) have written an open letter. The letter underlines the need for animal testing in science and addresses the spread of factually incorrect inf

Belgian scientists hit back at ‘Nazi’ slur in one-sided media reporting

Bob Tolliday

Nov 15, 2018
3 min

Belgian scientists hit back at ‘Nazi’ slur in one-sided media reporting

Belgian researchers have countered an uncritical feature interview with animal rights activists who repeated factual inaccuracies about animal research and likened scientists to Nazis. In response to the pieces in De Morgen and Humo (both in Flemish) the scientists refuted the claims that animal experiments are unreliable, that computer simulations and artificial intelligence are fully-fledged alternatives, that scientists just “do what they want” and that animal experiments

On Lab Animal Day, Belgian science unites in support of animal research

Bob Tolliday

Aug 15, 2016
3 min

On Lab Animal Day, Belgian science unites in support of animal research

This blog was also published on Huffington Post UK. World Day for Laboratory Animals on 24 April was originally established by animal rights activists to raise awareness for the fate of animals in laboratories. Every year on that day, they organise demonstrations and petitions against animal research. But this time, on behalf of 24 research institutions in Belgium, we wanted to raise awareness of the important biomedical research that would not be possible without research us