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OCR for page 81
Individual Statements by
Members of the Committee on the Use of
Laboratory Animals in Biomedical and
Behavioral Research
These individual statements appear exactly as the commit-
tee members prepared them. The National Research Council
neither endorses nor takes responsibility for the content of
the statements.
A1tTHUR C. GUYTON
This statement is made for two purposes: first, to express severe
disappointment that our Committee Report fails to make clear how
seriously the Animal Rights Movement and increasing government
regulation are unpeding essential medico research; and, second, to
record at least one Scenting vote against the implication in the
Recommendations section of the main report that the present
regulatory framework will allow a healthy future for medical research.
The success of the Animal Rights Movement in making medical
research difficult h" been phenomenal in the last 3 years. One
fifth of all States have already passed laws prohibiting release of
pound arenas for medical research. And multiple animal rights-
welfare organizations have announced publicly their priority goal to
eliminate by law all release of pound animals for medical research
within the next few years. Historically, most large-animal medical
research has been performed in dogs and cats obtained from pounds
81
OCR for page 82
82
INDIVIDUAL STATEMENTS
because these are all unwanted animals and because the cost to
society in using these animate is almost zero, which contrasts with a
cost of many minions of doBars when alternative animals are used.
Also, the Anunal Rights Movement has been surprisingly effec-
tive ~ getting the Federal Government to establish very restrictive
regulations on medical research. Some of the most blatant of these
are: 1) The necessity to obtain prior approval before performing each
type of animal experiment, a requirement that often delays essential
research as much as two months. 2) A requirement that all major
survival surgery on rabbits or larger animate be performed in a sur-
gical operating room suite costing an average of a quarter million
dollars add directed by a high-salaried veterinarian, even though the
veterinarian usually is not a trained surgeon. In the past, this type of
surgery has been done exceedingly successfully in the investigator's
own laboratory at no extra cost. 3) Very arbitrary regulations for
specific cage sizes, and even these have been changed on multiple oc-
casions, costing hundreds of mullions of dollars throughout the United
States. These are only examples of a litany of such regulations.
The net effect has been an extreme increase in the cost of ani-
mab used ~ research as well as cost of lost time and effort by the
investigator. Including the expense of meeting federal regulations,
the cost of dogs and cats used in research, together tenth the cost
of their care, now averages more than $1,000 per animal in some
institutions, and this does not count the cost of the research itself.
Historically, when an~rnals were readily available on a days notice
from local animal pounds, the cost of dogs and cats was very little.
Role of Veterinarian Professionalism in Imposing New Difflcut-
ties for Medical Research. Veterinarian scientists have made and are
making major contributions to medical research. However, in the last
three years, there has been a proliferation of new government regu-
lations requiring vastly expanded and costly roles for veterinarians
as regulators of virtually all animal-bed biomedical research. This
presumably has come about because thme government agencies that
make the regulations (for example, the Inspection Agency of the De-
partment of Agriculture) are staffed to a great extent by professional
veterinarians, and they naturally believe that others cannot have
the expertise to work properly with animals. Yet, we all know that
medical professionalism, with doctors regulating doctors, and legal
professionalism, with lawyers regulating lawyers, always under the
pretense of high principles, make medical and legal services extremely
expensive to the public. In a similar manner, this new proliferation
OCR for page 83
INDIVIDUAL STATEMENTS
83
of animal-control regulations requires a very costly layer of veterinar-
ian regulators who do not actually participate in the research itself.
The vast and superb medical research accomplishment of the put
has been achieved without this new bureaucracy. Is it truly needed
now? Arid if so, ~ it not also needled for the pounds and animal
right~weifare shelters which house and kiD 50 times as many dogs
and cats each year as does medical research?
Misplaced Faithin ~Alternatives~toAnimaiResearch. TheCom-
niittee Report contains an entire chapter on Alternative Methods in
Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Unfortunately, the prorrunence
Of this chapter gives false hope that animal-based medical research
can be done with substitutes for animals. Unless we substitute human
beings as the research subjects, this is very rarely true. Therefore,
it is seriously wrong for the Committee Report to give such false ex-
pectation. The Animal Rights Movement h" Creaky made a strong
effort in Congress to divert as much as one-fifth to one-half of ah
health-related research money to studies using only animal ~alter-
natives,~ ~d our report will likely be used to suDnort further such
efforts.
—or
Desperate Need for Help in Combating the Initiatives of the An-
imal Rights Movement and of Regulatory Bureaucracies. It is clear
that the Annnal Rights Movement, with the help of new and expand-
ing federal, state, and local laws, is rapidly making much animal
research cost ineffective as well as extremely wasteful of the research
scientist' time. Many of the regulations appear not to have been
thought through, such as the requirement for a quarter of a million
dollar operating room suite to perform operations on rabbits.
The new federal regulations are similar to those established in
Europe several decades ago; large animal research is now close to
annihilation in Europe. As a result, the Europeans have made very
little contribution in certain types of medical research, for example
in cardiovascular surgery, except when the research could be done on
human bergs themselves.
Therefore, the medicad research corrununity desperately needs
strong help in combating both the Anunal Rights Movement and
the growing regulatory bureaucracies. Our committee has failed to
produce a document that will be helpful for tiers purpose. This is
understandable because the committee itself includes many members
who have never worked in anunal research ~d particularly includes
two Presidents of national animal Welfares organizations.
Considering the rapidly expanding restrictive and time-wasting
OCR for page 84
84
INDIVIDUAL STATEMENTS
regulatory environment, I cannot in all good conscience recommend
to young researchers that they pursue careers In those types of med-
ical research that require the use of animals. How will it be possible
to make many new advances ~ medicine?
CHRISTINE STEVENS
The report refilses to face the widespread, ingrained problem of
unnecessary suffering among the millions of laboratory animals used
yearly in our country, nor does it make so much as a passing reference
to the serious problem of poor research using excessive numbers of
animals.
The single recommendation, approved by majority vote, to im-
prove the treatment of about 85% of research animals was reversed at
the only Committee meeting ~ did not attend. The reversed recom-
mendation requested the Secretary of Agriculture to issue regulations
under the Animal Welfare Act extending its protection to Ace, rats,
birds and farm animals used for biomedical research.
Ironically, for lack of application of the minimum standards of
the Animal Welfare Act, conditions of extreme neglect and abuse
developed in a rodent laboratory under the jurisdiction of a Com-
nuttee member. Dozens of photographs documenting long-~tanding
filth, holes in wads and roof through which wild rodents gam access,
hazardous hancIling of carcinogens and other improprieties which
could confound test results and endanger personnel, were sent me
by a concerned worker who asked my help in obtaining desperately
needed reforms.
Another member of the Committee indicated that his institution
doesn't know the number of mice and rats used and if reported, it is
not the truth.
The report was to have provided new factual information on
numbers of animals used, but the study was never conducted. Thus,
there is no new quantification on animal use as announced by NAS
when the Committee was formed. Readers are led to believe that
animal use, especially of primates, is declining, e.g. The substantial
decrease (47 percent) in the use of nonhuman primates... (p. 61~.
But USDA figures document an increase of 26.48% from 1986 to
1987. Total animal use also increased as did animals reported by the
institutions as experiencing unrelieved pain. The chart (pp. 2~21)
omits available USDA data on wild animals.
Although the report claims to favor animal welfare and oppose
OCR for page 85
INDIVIDUAL STATEMENTS
BS
animal rights, the net effect is a de facto undermining of animal
welfare.
~ was shocked by the attitude of Committee members who as
sorted that we have no moral obligation to animate and expressed
hatred of the idea of having a report that puts emphasis on alter-
natives. Committee members decried the public notion that animus
have rights. If they do, one observed, ~ don't think we have the right
to do an~rnal experiments. During a cliscumion of current NTH regu-
lations requiring that grant proposals provide data that will advance
knowledge of irnunediate or potential benefit to humans and animals,
members asked one another whether they agreed. We agree or we
don't get any money was the response. It was surprising to hear the
assertion that everybody cheats and prevaricates.
Although it is well known and widely acknowledged that the
health and welfare of experimental animals is essential if sound oh
servations are to be achieved, Committee members insisted that
animal welfare rules should not be seen ~ a method of improving
science.
Material presented by Committee members on the benefits of
regulation of animal experimentation and the history of such reg-
ulation in Europe was cut from the report which instead makes
the unreferenced charge that in Come countries" unspecified Strict
legmIation" ho Deduced potential contributions to human welfare.
The modest U.S. legislation is unreasonably characterized as ha
large body of laws and regulations" by which institutions and in-
vestigators are said to be "unnecessarily confused and burdened.
Regulations under the 1985 amendments to the Animal Welfare Act
have been held up by the very people who want to claim that "hu-
mane care and use of laboratory animads characterize the scientific
community."
Virtually no acknowledgement of outstanding research results
from scientific work appears In the report unless they were based on
the use of vertebrate animals. Yet:
— a substantial proportion of NIH funds are dispensed for
epidern~ological and cImical research
much animal experimentation produces no significant re-
sults
leading scientists have publicly criticized erroneous conclu-
sions resulting from large-scale anneal experiments.
These exemplify matters on which readers of the report should
OCR for page 86
86
INDIVIDUAL STATEMENTS
receive objective information. But objectivity ~ incompatible with
the ~strong, hard-hitting report" promoters of animal experiments
demand.
To prevent cruelty and theft by dog dealers and to encourage
painless experunents in place clef painful ones, ~ recommended "That
dogs and cats obtained from public pounds be 1) used only for non-
survival experiments under full anesthesia in which the animal is first
rendered unconscious and never aBowed to recover consciousness but
passes directly into death, and 2) obtained directly by the registered
research facility from the pound, not through a dealer. The recom-
mendations on this subject (pp. 10, 73) do not accurately represent
my proposal or my position. The report faire to take account of
animal fear and pain.
The assertion that Inmost research animus are humanely killed
at some potty is unreferenced. Not surprisingly, since there is no
reporting system in place which would enable this assertion to be
documented. We do not know how many animals are I) kiDed hu-
manely, 2) killed inhumanely, or 3) left to die unattended without
pain relief.
The executive summary (p. 6) erroneously states that according
to law: "... all animals used receive adequate presurgic~ and post-
surgica] care and pain-reliev~ng drugs. But 130,373 anneals were
denied pa~n-relie~ring drugs under the law's exemption provision dur-
ing 1987, according to the annual reports submitted by Registered
Research Facilities to USDA.
Nothing ~ the report even hints at the long-drawn-out pain
and suffering undergone by many laboratory animals. Instead, they
are characterized as ~niinorn (p. 63) and a false claim is made that
ad serious violations have resulted ~ suspension of funding and/or
imposition of fines. Mundane facts revealed in inspection reports of
major research facilities by veterinary inspectors of the USDA are
ignored. Typical findings of inspectors include:
most rabbits without water
excessive build up of manure and hair
overcrowding
moldy feed
dogs with distemper
piles of rodent droppings throughout building
dogs standing in water
rat holes numerous
phenomenal number of roaches
OCR for page 87
INDDYIDUAL STAT~E:NTS
87
surgical site for implantation of electrodes into primates'
brains conducted in office off busy hallway, only chemical sterilization
of equipment
monkeys wet and smeared with excrete
dog needs reellturing
sick kitten not under care of veterinarian. Blood Tom
rectum and paresis of rear limb
dogs sitting ~ urine and feces.
Such conditions for anneals are ~ source of uncontrolled vari-
ables that skew research results, thus wasting scientific effort ancI
taxpayers' money. The only acknowledgment of this suffering ~ one
sentence: "From time to time some few members of the scientific
community have been found to mistreat or inadequately care for
research anunab." The Executive Summary even waters down this
feeble statement by omitting the word ~mistreat."
A balanced report should recognize the severity and extent of the
problem. It should recognize the essential role of sound regulation to
pretreat neglect and abuse of research animal, for the animals' sake
add research accuracy. It should vigorously advocate:
I) research and development of alternatives, i.e., methods to
reduce, refine or replace final tests*
2) training laboratory personnel in humane care and treat-
ment of animals
3) choice of least painful procedures by investigators
4) substantial government funding for data bases designed to:
reduce unintended duplication of animal tests, facilitate distribution
of information on alternatives and malce non-warm-blooded animal
systems as fable to investigators and students.
*An earlier version stated "Mammalian usage can be decreased by various
techniques of replacement and reduction... More such models will become
available particularly if additional research is devoted to this effort."
OCR for page 88
Representative terms from entire chapter:
rights movement
