Copyright 1999, the National Academy Press. Keywords, machine extracted. Top 50 words repeated twice, next 100 once, plus phrases. OCR for page 92 Summary of Presentations Tatsuji Nomura Director, Central Institute for Experimental Animals Kawasaki, Japan In Japan, we view laboratory animal science as an integrative science that encompasses various disciplines including veterinary science, medicine, pharma- cology, drug discovery, and animal experimentation technology. Laboratory animal science is viewed as one part of the infrastructure of biomedical research that aids in the quest to promote the health and welfare of humans and animals.
Laboratory animals are indispensable to basic research in nearly all facets of the biosciences.
Laboratory animals are also required as living scales for drug devel- opment and safety testing of those drugs. The progress of laboratory animal science requires global leadership and partnership. Historically, several laboratory animal centers were established around the world at about the same time, during the 1950s. These centers had the common goal of modernizing laboratory animal science by improving the quality of laboratory animals, thereby improving research and testing that required ani- mals. Until that time, most stocks of laboratory animals were overtly or covertly infected with various pathogens, and the genetic quality of animals was not widely appreciated.