GUEST POST: Transparency in Animal Research

A report recently published by a Canadian university has disclosed a sobering statistic regarding animal testing. In an effort to bring a sense of transparency to the controversial practice of using animals for research purposes, the University of British Columbia (UBC) disclosed that more than 200,000 animals¹ were used for experimentation and testing in 2010. The disclosure is the first of its kind in Canada, a country where federal law requires animal testing prior to conducting human clinical trials for new therapies. Animal rights activists have been alarmed by this number, but in context it is actually quite low, and indicative of humane testing practices at UBC.4

Human society is largely reliant on animals for a number of different things: food, companionship, entertainment, transportation, and as beasts of burden. The heated debate that surrounds the use of animals as test subjects for biomedical research has come under more scrutiny than other uses, mostly due to a sketchy ethical history. Early biomedical and even psychological studies on animals would have been considered quite cruel by today's standards, and would never have passed current regulations. Regulation in animal testing is a relatively new concept, as is animal cruelty legislation in general, and should be viewed as a sign of modernization.

Today, the research community is well aware that cruelty has no place in laboratories, and consequently scientists and technicians practice the utmost care in their research efforts in order to protect lab animals from unnecessary suffering. Whenever possible the three Rs of animal research are observed: replacement with non-animal testing methods wherever possible, reduction of the number of animals necessary wherever possible, and refinement before the animal testing stage to minimize the need for multiple experiments.

Government regulations in many countries have legalized the use of animals for the purpose of testing toxicity levels in products such as medications, vaccines, household cleaners, pesticides, and others before human use. However, the use of animals in cosmetic testing is more of a gray area, and regulation varies widely from country to country. Many argue that animals should not be used for testing of cosmetic and make-up products, which are not necessary to ensure the health of human beings. The United Kingdom seems to be at the forefront in this regard, with government initiatives such as the Animal Procedures Committee, and even there animal testing is growing more acceptable², so long as anti-cruelty measures are observed.

In the case of UBC, while 200,000 may look like a big number, the break down shows very little in the way of cruelty or even discomfort. All of those animals were carefully reviewed to make sure their treatment was humane, and 68 percent of them were classified as receiving minor or no discomfort during the testing process. “Minor” discomfort ranges from receiving a shot to small surgical procedures no more painful or cruel than spaying or neutering. Mammals other than rodents make up less than two percent of the total animals involved, with rodents and fish heading up the list. Animals involved in invasive procedures were appropriately anesthetized, and treated with the same level of care that humans receive while undergoing surgery. Before any study can use animals in an experiment, they have to go through several levels of review and approval, and all studies are subject to annual reviews and spot-checks to ensure that all cruelty regulations are obeyed. In short, animal research is not the haphazard institution that many animal rights groups would have you believe, and UBC is hoping its transparency will help rectify that misconception.

The fact is, there is no replacement for animal testing when it comes to medical research. Even the most modern advances³ in computer and cellular technology do not come close to the complexity of living organisms. The University of British Columbia has made it clear that their researchers are committed to affording the most humane conditions possible for the animals they use in biomedical research. The current trend among humans to live healthier and longer lives is evidence that it is working, and will lead to better, more accurate animal testing in the future. The humane treatment of animals in research labs must prevail in order to guarantee the survival of our own species, and transparency is essential to keeping it humane.

¹http://www.animalresearch.ubc.ca/

²http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/of-mice-and-medicine-in-defence-of-animal-experiments-2372843.html

³http://www.animalresearch.ubc.ca/_assets/pdf/ubc_ethical_research_20101130.pdf

⁴ www.phds.org

 

Guest post written by Brittany Lyons. Brittany aspires to be a psychology professor, but decided to take some time off from grad school to help people learn to navigate the academic lifestyle. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where she spends her time reading science fiction and walking her dog.

Government Counting Sheep? Now, Only in Its Dreams

An interesting article appeared in the NY Times and thought I would share it on this blog...

Last year, Wisconsin led the nation in mink farming, producing 833,430 pelts. Texas was the undisputed king of pansies, growing 1.8 million flats of the flowers. And no state harvested more hops than Washington, with 24,336 acres.

This year? Who knows? The government has stopped counting.

Forced to cut its budget, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has decided to eliminate dozens of reports, including the annual goat census (current population: 3 million), and the number of catfish on the nation's fish farms (177 million, not counting the small fry). Which raises an existential question: If the government stops counting catfish, do catfish farmers no longer count?

The decision, announced last month, to stop measuring various categories of agricultural products reflects a cold-blooded assessment of the economic usefulness of the 500 or so reports that the National Agriculture Statistics Service does every year. Corn, soybeans, cotton and other major commodities vital to the national economy will still be weighed, inventoried and otherwise tallied down to the last acre, bushel or bale. The same is true for cattle, pigs and poultry.

But USDA is saying, in effect, that the nation can get by just fine, thank you, without knowing how much hops brewers are holding in storage (46 million pounds in September) or the value of honey sold by North Dakota beekeepers ($70 million in 2010).

Farmers say such data is crucial - and not just because it helps them decide how much to plant or how many animals to raise. Potato farmers use reports on potato stocks to decide when to sell. Hops farmers use the data to persuade bankers to lend them money for costly processing facilities. Restaurant chains watch catfish numbers to anticipate price changes. With the Texas drought forcing farmers to send their sheep flocks to other states, wool and lamb buyers would normally use federal data to see where the animals went.

The government began producing regular crop reports in 1863, the year after Lincoln created the agriculture department. One of the reports being eliminated, an annual sheep inventory (5.5 million head on Jan. 1), can trace its roots at least as far back as 1866.

The statistics service said it was forced to reduce the frequency of some reports and eliminate others because its budget was cut for the fiscal year that ended in September and it expects further cuts for the current year. The eliminated reports will save $11 million a year.

Reprinted in part from The New York Times