Helping Animals in Research

By Nancy Lawson	Printer Friendly	e-mail this page

As an animal protection leader in your community, you may be able to secure a seat on an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee—and advocate from the inside on behalf of animals used in laboratories.

Most people who work with homeless animals experience a rollercoaster ride of emotions, relieved that they can do something to alleviate suffering but miserable that so much suffering exists in the first place. It’s hard to work in an animal shelter without lamenting the numbers, the abandonment, the societal attitudes toward creatures who give us so much yet depend entirely on our compassion for their own well-being.

But shelter animals are the lucky ones— maybe not as lucky as a cat curled up in bed with his loving human, but at least lucky enough to be dropped off in a warm, safe place staffed by people working hard to find new homes for them.

Across the country, millions of less fortunate animals live out their days as research subjects. On the way to our jobs helping homeless cats and dogs, many of us drive by universities, pharmaceutical companies, federal agencies, and biotech firms working to develop drugs and procedures that may improve our health or that of our pets— but at great cost to other species.

Even ardent animal lovers are complicit in a societal structure that values human life over that of other animals. When we pop a pill, brush our teeth with fluoride paste, or wash the kitchen counter with supermarket detergent, we are often using a product that at some point was tested on living creatures.

But we can at least reduce our impact—by purchasing household and cosmetic items not tested on animals, choosing alternatives to unnecessary medical treatments, lobbying for more protections for animals living in laboratories, and urging companies to support development of alternative research and testing methods.

Which Animals Are Covered?

The majority of the animals who end up in research have been bred specifically for laboratory use. Rats and mice make up 85 to 90 percent of all animals used, but some of the other species include dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, frogs, primates, and farm animals.

Not all animal research is subject to IACUC oversight—just those projects that involve species protected under the Animal Welfare Act and/or that are federally funded. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulates research on any warm-blooded animals covered by the Act and requires IACUC oversight of those activities. But therein lies the problem; the Act does not cover most mice, rats, and birds and also excludes reptiles, amphibians, and fish.

These animals do not fall through the cracks entirely, however. Institutions receiving federal funds for studies on any vertebrates—including those listed above—must also have IACUCs, according to the Public Health Service Policy that’s administered and coordinated by the National Institutes of Health.

Institutions that use private money to conduct research on mice, rats, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and other animals not covered by the Animal Welfare Act are not monitored by any agency.

And for organizations expected to take the lead in advocating for animals in their communities, yet another option exists: membership on a local research facility’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). Often pronounced “eye-uh-cook” by those in the field, this federally mandated committee is charged with overseeing and evaluating animal programs, reviewing animal research protocols, inspecting facilities, and investigating concerns. While IACUCs aren’t required at every institution (see box above), those that do exist even have the power to suspend research activities if laws, regulations, and approved protocols aren’t being followed.

Although people chosen to serve on IACUCs are usually employed by the institution or involved with research in some way, committee membership must include at least one person unaffiliated with the organization. While animal-protection leanings are not required of that person, Congress has gone so far as to indicate in legislation that the external member of an IACUC be someone who can provide “representation for general community interests in the proper care and treatment of animals.”

As a member of a veterinary technology school IACUC, Barbara Carr has been able to bring that kind of animal welfare perspective to the table. Though her advocacy background is no secret—she’s the longtime executive director of the SPCA Serving Erie County in New York— her fellow members are receptive to her challenges and inquiries about existing and proposed practices.

“There are certain things that come along that get questioned and thought about and discussed,” she says. “And I think that whenever a discussion happens, there is change. It may not be the measurable kind that you want that very moment, but change doesn’t happen overnight or on alternate Tuesdays.”

Even the presence of someone like Carr on an IACUC can help alter the direction of research in subtle ways. “I think sometimes they just don’t do things because they know that I’m there and I will cause a problem. I think it really does help the dialogue,” she says. “I’ve never gotten the impression they’re mad at me … and it’s just a different way of approaching the same things in many cases, and they have to think things through a little further.”

Some of Carr’s arguments are more successful than others, but at least she has a chance to make her voice heard—as when she tried to dissuade fellow committee members from approving the continued practice of orbital blood draws, a method that involves collecting blood from the sinus area behind the eye. Scientific groups such as the British Veterinary Association have said that only those competent in the task should perform it, but the veterinary technology students whose curriculum Carr helps oversee are novices in the method; they perform it at school only once in preparation for jobs in the lab science field. Since it’s difficult to develop competency in something after only one try, Carr asked her fellow members, why should students do it at all when they’re going to get on-the-job training anyway?

Though her question failed to eliminate the procedure from the curriculum, she says, others on the committee were at least able to hear a perspective they hadn’t considered before.

More recently, Carr scored a clearcut victory following a discussion of proper terminology. In a lesson plan under development, cervical dislocation—a procedure that could prove painful if not performed correctly—had been listed as a method of euthanasia alongside truly humane procedures (or ones that do not cause animal pain or distress) such as sodium pentobarbital injection.

Making the Approach

Through its passage of the Animal Welfare Act, Congress specified that IACUCs should include one member who represents general community interests in the proper treatment of animals. But the spirit of the law has not always been met or enforced.

And that’s the catch. Despite the seemingly protective regulations, research facilities have complete control over selection of IACUC members, and the identity of those members is often unknown—a system that can result in the appointment of people who aren’t serving in the interest of the animals. Committee meetings are often private, so proper oversight is dependent on the good conscience of the administrators at each institution or company (although some states require that IACUC meetings of public institutions be open to the public). In less progressive animal research facilities, the ability to participate on a committee and provide input is an uphill battle.

Still, serving on an IACUC is not an impossibility for animal protectionists, as the experiences of shelter directors like Barbara Carr and Susan Wilson attest. Neither of the two women sought membership— they were invited to serve on their respective committees—but both have plenty of advice for those interested in taking a proactive approach to getting involved. Here are some tips from Carr, Wilson, and the Animal Research Issues section of The HSUS:

Think like an academic. When in Rome, do as the Romans do—or at least approach them in a way they’ll find familiar, suggests Wilson. Prepare your resume and include a letter explaining why you would like a position on the committee. Get to know the Animal Welfare Act and Public Health Service Policy, and do your homework by studying up on the roles and responsibilities of IACUCs.

Also focus on what you have to offer, says Carr. “I would say [to research facility officials] that most private individuals don’t have enough knowledge to know what questions to ask, and that if a school is serious about having a legitimate IACUC, then they ought to be involving people like me,” she says. “And I would tell them, ‘I feel that I have enough knowledge in the area of animal welfare that I could be a benefit to you.’ ”

The more you can show you know, the stronger your case will be.

Be realistic. The temptation to try to stop all animal research might be strong for some advocates, but attempting to act on that desire in an IACUC situation won’t further the cause. Gaining better treatment of animals in research settings is a slow process that requires compromise and patience.

“You should be somebody on the committee who’s providing helpful information,” says Kathleen Conlee, director of program management for the Animal Research Issues section of The HSUS. “You can’t just say, ‘You can’t do that.’ An IACUC member’s job is to offer alternatives or better techniques—including alternatives that have the potential to replace animal use altogether for individual projects.”

In other words, it doesn’t pay to be militant or accusatory, says Wilson. “But if you are willing to … make reasoned decisions and objections or express your concerns, then it’s a win-win situation,” she says.

Describe what’s in it for them. Even though so much laboratory science involving animals goes on behind tightly closed doors, universities and other institutions are still vulnerable to heavy criticism of animal research practices. It’s in their best interest to ensure they are not only following the letter of the law but establishing animal care standards that would be acceptable to the community at large—namely minimizing animal pain, distress, and suffering while also working to replace animal use.

To help make your case that animal advocates are actually advantageous to research facilities, you might include the arguments presented in “Appointing Animal Protectionists to Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees” by Martin Stephens, PhD, HSUS vice president for animal research issues, and coauthor Lisa Hara Levin, DVM. According to Stephens and Levin, research institutions should seek people known for their work on behalf of animals for the following reasons:

to follow the spirit of the Animal Welfare Act
to gain advice not only from a different (non-institutional) perspective, but from a statutorily relevant perspective (animal welfare)
to enable at least one person on the IACUC to see her role exclusively as an advocate for the research animals
to be discouraged from undertaking proposed projects that would stretch the limits of public acceptance
to demonstrate a willingness to be open to outside scrutiny
to engender good community relations
to educate animal advocates about the research process
to lessen the polarization between the animal research and animal protection communities

Stephens and Levin go on to outline perceived pitfalls of including an animal protectionist on an IACUC, presenting counterarguments that could prove useful to anyone trying to correct misperceptions about advocates in the research setting.

“We have had enough trouble in this country understanding the difference between killing and euthanasia without us teaching [that] killing [is] euthanasia in a veterinary technology setting,” says Carr. “There was all this argument, and I just wouldn’t budge, and they finally said, ‘Okay, we’ll take it out of the list.’ ”

Questions posed by a single IACUC member can sometimes be enough to send a research proposal back for further explanation or even revision. During her service on a university IACUC, shelter director Susan Wilson challenged certain methods she thought could be improved upon and urged adoption of animals at the conclusion of certain studies. Because the university had strict standards, she says, other committee members were usually amenable to exploring her concerns further.

“If I raised a question such as, ‘Gee, you know, this is not a way that I find acceptable in terms of ending the life of the animal for harvesting purposes,’ they would say, ‘Oh, okay, well, we’ll send it back and we’ll get a better explanation,’ ” says Wilson, the executive director of the Humane Society of Southern Arizona.

The Role of an IACUC Member: Are You Ready?

Being the layperson in any situation is tough. To the uninitiated, a visit to the animal shelter can feel like a whirlwind—new lingo, new sights, new sounds, a whole new culture unto its own.

Serving on an IACUC might be similarly disorienting to a nonscientist, but there are ways to prepare. If you are serious about attempting to become a member, read on to learn the requirements of the job.

Educate yourself—and the researchers. As an effective IACUC member, you should be well-versed in common procedures and animal health measures—the least invasive type of blood draw, for example, or the appropriate time to end cancer research in mice with everexpanding tumors.

If this sounds complicated, take heart in the fact that many scientists aren’t up to date on the best methods, and don’t chide yourself for what you don’t know yet. By making use of all the resources at your fingertips—including The HSUS’s Pain & Distress Report and the USDA’s online Animal Welfare Information Center—you can learn how to identify problems and understand where to go for further assistance.

Written reports and studies will help legitimize your arguments, as they did for a university-affiliated veterinarian trying to persuade a colleague to stop research on rats in an undergraduate psychology course. After writing to Kathleen Conlee of The HSUS about his concerns regarding water deprivation, the vet received an abundance of resources that helped him successfully make his case.

If you already serve on an IACUC committee, take advantage of opportunities to attend gatherings and workshops that will teach you more about the subject matter. During her tenure on a university IACUC, Susan Wilson of the Humane Society of Southern Arizona traveled to a Scientists Center for Animal Welfare conference, courtesy of the university.

Understand your responsibilities. Researchers submitting proposals to IACUCs are supposed to use common language that the public can comprehend, and it’s up to external members to enforce that guideline, says Wilson. “There were times I’d pick up [a proposal] and read that thing and think, ‘I could turn this upside down and it’d make more sense,’ ” says Wilson. “And so what your community member tends to do is impose upon [the researchers] that they need to use lay language, reminding them that [while] we’re not dummies, this has to be understandable.”

Depending on the institution, homework can be as heavy as two pounds of protocols that need to be reviewed in a week or as light as a few changes in curriculum that take place only twice a year. The same goes for meetings. Because she is on the IACUC of a small veterinary technology college, Barbara Carr of the SPCA Serving Erie County meets only twice a year with fellow committee members. But Wilson used to attend monthly university meetings, where the IACUC oversaw an abundance of research at the medical school, nursing school, school of pharmacy, and health sciences center.

Information presented to committee members is often confidential, so soliciting assistance from someone in the know can be tricky. Asking generic questions of a scientist friend unassociated with the proposal in question is acceptable, but disclosing specifics could violate confidentiality agreements, says Wilson.

“Be prepared to spend a lot of time on this,” she says, “because we’re talking procedures and language and equipment and techniques and things that you don’t run across necessarily in your day-to-day humane society work or your shelter work. And so you really are having to learn a whole new vocabulary.”

Semi-annual inspections can also run the gamut from easy to elaborate. Wilson has inspected everything from the dairy farm to the primate behavioral lab; the latter required inoculations for hepatitis and other diseases before she could even walk in the door.

Be willing to work within the system. Serving on an IACUC can challenge not just your technical and diplomatic skills but also your emotions. It wasn’t as much the individual cases that weighed heavily on Wilson as it was the cumulative effect of seeing how many thousands of rodents were being used for research, particularly in the pharmacy department. “If you’re looking at each individual protocol, you can ask specific questions,” she says. “But then each year it’s just like, ‘Oh my god, another hundred of these and thousands of those.’ ”

Wilson served on a university IACUC for seven years but finally gave it up when the workload of her job as a shelter director became too great. For the last two years she has served on the IACUC of a local community college, where her readings and responsibilities are less time-consuming and easier to fit into her schedule.

Her willingness to keep working on animal research oversight committees stems from a desire to work internally to help implement change. But to others interested in following that example, she has this advice: Be prepared for questions from the community.

“I was like a lightning rod,” Wilson says of her IACUC service. “[People said], ‘If you’re going to those meetings, it means you’re buying into it.’ I said, ‘Well, no, it means I’m working within the system. I believe that to be important, rather than working outside of the system.’ And so you get into this dialogue in the community that may or may not be helpful to you, so you have to think ahead and ask yourself: Are you ready for that dialogue?”

Sometimes the response was positive change rather than mere explanations, as when Wilson and fellow committee members requested justification from researchers who’d failed to include pain management in their proposals. “Quite often they would come back and say, ‘Well, there’s no real organic reason why we can’t, so we’re going to do it,’ ” says Wilson.

Though incremental, the changes urged by Carr and Wilson may have a long-term effect on attitudes. And the assistance provided—such as the protocols Carr developed for monitoring dogs with seizure disorders— may help professors, researchers, and students see that ensuring animal comfort should be a part of the daily routine.

Service on IACUCs has helped Carr and Wilson as well, giving them the opportunity to connect with local institutions and spread the word about animal shelters and animal welfare issues. Most veterinary technicians at the SPCA Serving Erie County are graduates of the college where Carr serves as the unaffiliated community member; Carr even hopes the school will establish a shelter medicine program in the future.

During her seven years on a university IACUC, Wilson was invited to address students in animal care courses, a forum that gave her the opportunity to talk about animal homelessness, sheltering, and the differences among animal rights, animal welfare, and animal use philosophies. “I urged students to identify what their philosophy was and where they were along the continuum,” says Wilson. “I really was given a lot of latitude in those classes.”

HSUS Position Statement on Biomedical Research and Testing

The Humane Society of the United States works towards a time when animals are no longer used in harmful research and testing, and we approach this goal in ways that do not compromise the progress of science or improvements in health care for humans and animals.

The HSUS promotes research methods that have the potential to replace or reduce animal use, or refine animal use so that the animals experience less suffering. (Replacement, reduction, and refinement are known as the “Three Rs” or as “alternative methods.”) The HSUS believes that the Three Rs approach, when rigorously applied, benefits both animal welfare and good science.

The HSUS further believes that the elimination of all substantial pain and distress in research animals, whether resulting from experimental procedures, poor care and housing, or other means, should be an urgent priority. Moreover, those animal species capable of a rich mental and emotional life that cannot be nurtured in laboratory facilities should not be used in laboratory research.

Resources

The HSUS’s Animal Research Issues section
A visit to the HSUS website will provide you with details about everything from the unnecessary suffering caused by Botox testing to USDA allegations that a California university has violated the Animal Welfare Act. Here you will also find The HSUS’s Pain & Distress Report, an invaluable resource for new research, statistics, surveys, and recommendations related to pain and distress prevention and mitigation; the report includes references to well-respected scientific journals that you can cite when arguing for more humane protocols. The Animal Research Issues website also has technical reports on various issues, such as concerns regarding carbon dioxide euthanasia or the use of animals in polyclonal antibody production. For further assistance, call 301-258-3042 or e-mail ari@hsus.org.

IACUC.org (sponsored by the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science)
This website includes a wealth of information for IACUCs, including links to publications, databases, bibliographies, and groups that outline alternatives to animal testing. Here you can also download adoption policies and waiver forms, templates for managing inspections, and other sample documents. A list of IACUC training materials and locations is available on the website as well.

Alternatives to Animal Testing on the Web
A coalition of government, industry, university, and animal welfare scientists is behind this online project. The site provides journal and mainstream articles on relevant topics, information on upcoming conferences, and an A-Z library on everything from appropriate analgesia to “humane endpoints”—the term used to describe the point at which research on an animal should end in the best interests of animal welfare and science. Among other helpful information for newcomers, the site provides a list that decodes common acronyms in the field.

Animal Welfare Information Center
Maintained by the USDA’s National Agricultural Library, this site includes news and information on legislation, policies, guidelines, and federal regulations related to laboratory animal care, IACUCs, and alternatives to animal testing. The AWIC hosts a workshop for scientists, IACUC members, information specialists, administrators, and veterinarians; information on times is posted, along with slides of a Powerpoint presentation used in the seminar. Also posted on the website are links to databases as well as brochures and articles on alternatives to animal testing and IACUC review protocols. A copy of “Appointing Animal Protectionists to Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees,” coauthored by HSUS vice president for animal research issues Martin Stephens, PhD, is available here, too.

Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Animal Care program
If you are interested in serving on an IACUC but don’t know where animal research takes place in your area, check out this site, which lists USDA-regulated institutions by state.

National Institutes of Health, Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare
This site will also be helpful to people looking for animal research facilities in their communities; institutions that receive federal funding for animal research (and that are therefore required to have an IACUC) are listed here.

Applied Research Ethics National Association/ Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research
This organization runs a class called IACUC 101, sometimes in conjunction with the NIH’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare. IACUC members should approach their respective institutions and request assistance in attending this important class—an experience that would ultimately benefit the institution.

Reproduced from the May-June 2005 issue of Animal Sheltering magazine.