404 A Menache clinical application (Contopoulos-Ioannidis et al 2003) Their study was further analysed by Crowley, who published the findings as follows: Of the 25,000 articles searched, about 500 (2 per cent) contained some potential claim to future applicability in humans, about 100 (0.4 per cent) resulted in a clinical trial, and, according to the authors, only (0.004 per cent) led to the development of a clinically useful class of drugs (angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors) in the 30 years following their publication of the basic science finding (Crowley 2003) What is equally intriguing is the fact that the development of this class of drugs did not depend on animal experiments Rather, they were the result of rational drug design (Kellici et al 2015) The Current Ethical Review Process Is Complicit in Animal Abuse Article 27 of Directive 2010/63/EU makes provision for the establishment of an Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body [AWERB] to oversee institutional animal experiments One of the tasks of the AWERB is ‘to advise the staff on the application of the requirement of replacement, reduction and refinement and keep it informed of technical and scientific developments concerning the application of that requirement’ Article 26 of the directive stipulates that the AWERB ‘shall include at least the person or persons responsible for the welfare of the animals and, in the case of a user, a scientific member’, as well as receiving input from a designated veterinarian There is no official requirement to co-opt representatives from the public or independent scientific experts This is an important omission in the directive as it may exclude public participation in the ethical review process Although most AWERBs contain an ethicist or a philosopher, these individuals are not a substitute for public representatives or independent experts who are knowledgeable on the use of replacements to animal experiments In a best case scenario where an AWERB does contain a public representative or a member of an animal protection organisation, that individual will automatically be in a minority position and can expect to be systematically outvoted on major issues (Ashby 2012) The current ethical review process is an almost watertight system for approval of any animal study proposal, not only because of the imbalance in the composition of the AWERB, but also because of the framework