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Researchers Protest Proposed Law

Researchers in Italy are protesting a proposed law that would implement some of the most restrictive regulations regarding animal use in scientific studies, the Nature News Blog reports.

The law would go further than the 2010 European Union directive on animal research and would require an anesthetic for any procedure that produces mild pain, including injections, and would limit the use of dogs, cats, and non-human primates to certain drug testing and translational medicine studies, the Nature News Blog adds.

The protesters, organized by the lobbying group Pro-Test Italia, say that such restrictions will hamper biomedical research in the country. The International Society for Stem Cell Research adds that stem cell research particularly would be affected as the regulations ban xenotransplantation.

"We commend Pro-test Italia in championing life-saving animal research and opposing restrictive regulations that will slow scientific progress," the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology said in a statement.

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