This article describes the Swedish rules about experiments on animals and the function of the Swedish animal ethics experimentation committees. A small survey of the rules about experiments on animals in Norway, Denmark, Finland, England and Wales, and the EU, is included. The Swedish rules on animal experimentation are examined in order to see how their form and functions relate to theories about different kinds of decision making in public law. The extents to which the rules agree with the aims of the law and with existing normative patterns are also examined. The difficulties to handle the ethical weighting between the importance of the experiment and the suffering of the animals are discussed.
European Public Law