Ethics and law on human and animal relationship

This essay aims to describe, in its essential lines, the nationaland community regulatory framework that regulates animals in biomedical experimentation. Methodological means will be provided to understand the legal problems and moral dilemmas under which they are justified by arguments for or against animal testing. The principles of the 3R will be studied in depth. They represent the backbone of the legal architecture on the basis of which to correctly interpret the normative documents on animal testing. In particular, the main proposal of this essay is the legal description of the three pillars of the 3R - replacement, reduction and refinement - and of their different definitions, starting from the original definition of Russell and Burch up to the current definitions drawn up by the guidelines and self-regulation codes of the bioethics committees.