In May/June 1995 the European Centre for Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) held a workshop on the role of replacement, refinement and reduction, ie the Three Rs, in biomedical research and testing. A report and the recommendations of this workshop were published in the journal ATLA and have now been reprinted with minor amendments. This 29-page document is a most valuable resource of the current situation re the Three Rs. It covers the origins and the evolution of the three Rs concept, the reduction alternatives, the refinement alternatives and the replacement alternatives. Interwoven with these main themes there are a number of more general items on such matters as: considerations of the scientific and ethical justification of using animals for research purposes; on the validations and scientific barriers to the adoption of alternative methods; and on educating, training and informing scientists and the general public about the use of limitation of the Three Rs approach. The whole is finished with some 58 Conclusions and Recommendations and a 112 item list of references.