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Sara Reardon Mice are sensitive to minor changes in food, bedding and light exposure. It’s no secret that therapies that look promising in mice rarely work in people. But too often, experimental treatments that succeed in one mouse population do not even work in other mice, suggesting that many rodent studies may be flawed from the start. “We say mice are simpler, but I think the problem is deeper than that,” says Caroline Zeiss, a veterinary neuropathologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Researchers rarely report on subtle environmental factors such as their mice’s food, bedding or exposure to light; as a result, conditions vary widely across labs despite an enormous body of research showing that these factors can significantly affect the animals’ biology. “It’s sort of surprising how many people are surprised by the extent of the variation” between mice that receive different care, says Cory Brayton, a pathologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. At a meeting on mouse models at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK, on 9–11 February, she and others explored the many biological factors that prevent mouse studies from being reproduced. Christopher Colwell, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has first-hand experience with these issues. He and a colleague studied autism in the same genetically modified mouse line, but obtained different results on the same behaviour tests. Eventually they worked out why: Colwell, who studies circadian rhythms, keeps his mice dark in the daytime to trick their body clocks into thinking day is night, so that the nocturnal animals are more alert when tested during the day. His colleague does not. © 2016 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 21892 - Posted: 02.13.2016

Sara Reardon Panzee the chimpanzee was a skilled communicator that could tell untrained humans where to find hidden food by using gestures and vocalizations. Austin the chimp was particularly adept with a computer, and scientists have been scanning its genome for clues to its unusual cognitive abilities. Both apes lived at a language-research centre at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and both died several years ago — but they will live on in an online database of brain scans and behavioural data from nearly 250 chimpanzees. Researchers hope to combine this trove, now in development, with a biobank of chimpanzee brains to enable scientists anywhere in the world to study the animals’ neurobiology. This push to repurpose old data is especially timely now that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has decided to retire its remaining research chimpanzees. The agency decommissioned more than 300 animals in 2013, but kept 50 available for research in case of a public-health emergency. Following an 18 November decision, this remaining population will also be sent to sanctuaries in the coming years. The NIH also hopes to retire another 82 chimps that it supports but does not own, says director Francis Collins. “We were on a trajectory toward zero, and today’s the day we’re at zero,” says Jeffrey Kahn, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who led a 2011 study on the NIH chimp colony for the Institute of Medicine. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 21660 - Posted: 11.25.2015

By AUSTIN RAMZY HONG KONG — Australian officials have responded to criticism from animal rights activists and celebrities, including the former actress Brigitte Bardot and the singer Morrissey, that a government plan to protect threatened species by killing millions of feral cats is unnecessarily cruel. Gregory Andrews, Australia’s threatened species commissioner, has written open letters to Ms. Bardot and Morrissey saying that feral cats prey on more than 100 of the country’s threatened species and that they were a “major contributor” to the extinction of at least 27 mammal species in the country over the past 200 years. He called some of the extinct species, such as the lesser bilby, desert bandicoot, crescent nailtail wallaby and big-eared hopping mouse, “delightful creatures, rich in importance in Australian indigenous culture, and formerly playing important roles in the ecology of our country. We don’t want to lose any more species like these.” The Australian Department of the Environment says that feral cats are the biggest threat to the country’s mammals, ahead of foxes and habitat loss. The government plan would use poison and traps to kill the cats. In announcing the plan in July, Greg Hunt, the environment minister, said that he wanted two million feral cats culled by 2020. Australia has an estimated 20 million feral cats, which are an invasive species brought by European settlers. Calls to exterminate the cats have been floated before, including one in the 1990s that called for killing all feral cats by 2020. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 21512 - Posted: 10.15.2015

By Martin Enserink Researchers who conduct animal studies often don't use simple safeguards against biases that have become standard in human clinical trials—or at least they don't report doing so in their scientific papers, making it impossible for readers to ascertain the quality of the work, an analysis of more than 2500 journal articles shows. Such biases, conscious or unconscious, can make candidate medical treatments look better than they actually are, the authors of the analysis warn, and lead to eye-catching results that can't be replicated in larger or more rigorous animal studies—or in human trials. Neurologist Malcolm MacLeod of the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and his colleagues combed through papers reporting the efficacy of drugs in eight animal disease models and checked whether the authors reported four measures that are widely acknowledged to reduce the risk of bias. First, if there was an experimental group and a control group, were animals randomly assigned to either one? (This makes it impossible for scientists to, say, assign the healthiest mice or rats to a treatment group, which could make a drug look better than it is.) Second, were the researchers who assessed the outcomes of a trial—for instance, the effect of a treatment on an animal's health—blinded to which animal underwent what procedure? Third, did the researchers calculate in advance the sample size needed to show that they didn't just accumulate data until they found something significant? And finally, did they make a statement about their conflicts of interest? © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 21507 - Posted: 10.14.2015

By David Grimm The journal Nature is revising its policy on publishing animal experiments after a study it ran in 2011 received criticism because the authors allowed tumors to grow excessively large in mice. The paper reported that a compound isolated from a pepper plant killed cancer cells without harming healthy cells. Yesterday, the journal published a correction to the study (the paper’s second), which noted that “some tumors on some of the animals exceeded the maximum size … permitted by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.” The tumors were only supposed to grow to a maximum of 1.5 cubic centimeters, but some reached 7 cubic centimeters, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, who first raised concerns about the paper in 2012. (Vaux spoke to Retraction Watch, which first reported the correction.) In an editorial published yesterday, Nature calls the large tumors “a breach of experimental protocol,” one that could have caused the mice to “have experienced more pain and suffering than originally allowed for.” The journal also noted the lapse could have implications beyond the one study, saying that “cases such as this could provoke a justifiable backlash against animal research.” Nature says it will now require authors to include the maximum tumor size allowed by its institutional animal-use committee, and to state that this size was not exceeded during the experiments. The journal does say, however, that it is not retracting the paper, and that the study remains “valid and useful.”

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 21418 - Posted: 09.20.2015

By JESSE McKINLEY ALBANY — In a case watched by animal rights activists and courtroom curiosity seekers, a State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan on Thursday denied a request to free a pair of chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, being held at a state university on Long Island. The unorthodox petition — which sought a writ of habeas corpus, an age-old method of challenging unlawful imprisonment — was the latest attempt by the nonprofit Nonhuman Rights Project to establish that apes are “legal persons.” The group argues that chimps are self-aware and autonomous, a contention it has supported by submitting affidavits attesting to the animals’ intelligence, language skills and personalities, among other traits, in several cases filed in New York on behalf of various imprisoned primates. In what the group hoped was a positive sign, Justice Barbara Jaffe of State Supreme Court in April ordered a hearing on whether Hercules and Leo, 8-year-old apes living as research subjects at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, could be released and transferred to an animal sanctuary in Florida. Arguments were heard in late May. But while Justice Jaffe took the case seriously — her 33-page decision cited the long history of habeas corpus and included references to discrimination against women and African-American slaves — she could not quite see Hercules and Leo as people in the eyes of the law. “For the purpose of establishing rights, the law presently categorizes entities in a simple, binary, ‘all or nothing,’ fashion,” the justice wrote, noting: “Persons have rights, duties, and obligations. Things do not.” “Animals, including chimpanzees and other highly intelligent mammals, are considered property under the law,” she continued. “They are accorded no legal rights,” beyond being free from mistreatment or abuse. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 21241 - Posted: 08.01.2015

By David Grimm The number of federally regulated animals used in U.S. biomedical research dropped last year to its lowest level since data collection began in 1972, according to new statistics posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Approximately 834,000 rabbits, nonhuman primates, and other regulated animals were used in research last year, compared with more than 1.5 million in the early 1970s. The use of these animals has been on a downward trend since 1993, with a 6% decrease from 2013 to 2014. Since USDA first started posting its numbers on its website in 2008, total use has dropped 17%. The figures do not include most mice, rats, birds, and fish, which make up 98% of lab animals but are not covered under the 1966 Animal Welfare Act (AWA). “It’s a continuation of a long-running trend that’s showing no sign of slowing down—in fact it’s speeding up,” says Tom Holder, the director of Speaking of Research, a U.K.-based organization that supports the use of animals in research. Animal rights activists are “very pleased,” says Alka Chandna, the senior laboratory oversight specialist at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which opposes the use of animals in research. The use of nearly every kind of AWA-covered animal dropped from 2013 to 2014. Twelve percent fewer dogs were used from 2013 to 2014 (16% fewer since 2008), 11% fewer rabbits (36% fewer since 2008), 11% fewer Guinea pigs (26% fewer since 2008), and 10% fewer nonhuman primates (19% fewer since 2008). The only animals to see an increase were “all other covered species,” which includes ferrets, squirrels, and some rodents (such as sand rats and deer mice) that are not excluded from the AWA. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 21153 - Posted: 07.11.2015

By ANDREW HIGGINS WIJK BIJ DUURSTEDE, Netherlands — The hiss of gas, released by a red lever turned by Arie den Hertog in the back of his white van, signaled the start of the massacre. The victims, crammed into a sealed, coffin-like wooden case, squawked as they struggled to breathe. Then, after barely two minutes, they fell silent. Glancing at the timer on his cellphone, Mr. Den Hertog declared the deed done. “Now it is all over,” he said proudly of his gruesomely efficient handiwork, on a gloriously sunny day beneath a row of poplar trees on the banks of the Lower Rhine. Reviled as a Nazi by animal rights activists but hailed as a hero by Dutch farmers, Mr. Den Hertog, 40, is the Netherlands’ peerless expert in the theory and practice of killing large numbers of wild geese. On his recent outing to Wijk bij Duurstede, a village in the Utrecht region southeast of Amsterdam, he killed 570 graylag geese in his portable gas chamber, fitted with two big canisters of carbon dioxide. That brought his death toll to more than 7,000 for the week. “It is not fun, but it has to be done,” he said of his work. The Dutch authorities insist it must be done, too. They pay Mr. Den Hertog to keep a ballooning geese population from devouring the grass of cow pastures and flying into planes taking off from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a major hub in Europe. He is the unpleasant answer to what has become a problem on a grand scale for the Netherlands. Geese populations here have skyrocketed, buoyed by a 1999 ban on hunting them; farmers’ increasing use of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, which geese apparently love; and the expansion of protected nature areas. That combination, plus an abundance of rivers and canals, has made the country a “goose El Dorado,” said Julia Stahl, head of research at Sovon, a group that monitors wild bird populations in the Netherlands. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20:
Link ID: 21048 - Posted: 06.15.2015

By David Grimm In 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a series of lawsuits asking courts to recognize four New York chimpanzees as legal persons and free them from captivity. The animal rights group, which hopes to set a precedent for research chimps everywhere, has yet to succeed, but in April a judge ordered Stony Brook University to defend its possession of two of these animals, Hercules and Leo. Last month, the group and the university squared off in court, and the judge is expected to issue a decision soon. But the scientist working with the chimps, anatomist Susan Larson, has remained largely silent until now. In an exclusive interview, Larson talks about her work with these animals and the impact the litigation is having on her studies—and research animals in general. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Q: Where did Hercules and Leo come from? A: They were born 8 years ago at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana. They were among the last juveniles New Iberia had. We've had them on loan for 6 years. Q: What kind of work do you do with them? A: We're interested in learning about the evolution of bipedalism by actually looking at what real animals do. Over the past 30 years, we've looked at 17 different species of primates, including 11 chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are the best model because they are so close to us. When we compare how they walk to how we walk, we can feed those data into computer models that may help us understand how early hominids like Lucy moved around. The work we're doing with Hercules and Leo is the most important work we've done. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 21040 - Posted: 06.13.2015

Krishnadev Calamur Two research chimps got their day in court — though they weren't actually present in the courtroom. Steven Wise, an attorney with the Nonhuman Rights Project, told Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Barbara Jaffe that Hercules and Leo, the 8-year-old research chimps at Stony Brook University on Long Island, are "autonomous and self-determining beings" who should be granted a writ of habeas corpus, which would effectively recognize them as legal persons. The chimps, he argued, should be moved from the university to a sanctuary in Florida. But Christopher Coulston, an assistant state attorney general representing the university, called the case meritless. The Associated Press reports that he said granting chimps personhood would create, in the words of the AP, "a slippery slope regarding the rights of other animals." "The reality is these are fundamentally different species," Coulston said. "There's simply no precedent anywhere of an animal getting the same rights as a human." Jaffe, the AP adds, didn't make a ruling Wednesday but called the proceeding "extremely interesting and well argued." NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reported on the story Wednesday for our Newscast unit. He says: "Past judges have struck down this lawsuit since it was first filed in 2013. But the current judge at the Manhattan Supreme Court is ordering the university to defend why it's detaining the chimps." © 2015 NPR

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20991 - Posted: 05.28.2015

George Yancy: You have popularized the concept of speciesism, which, I believe was first used by the animal activist Richard Ryder. Briefly, define that term and how do you see it as similar to or different from racism? Peter Singer: Speciesism is an attitude of bias against a being because of the species to which it belongs. Typically, humans show speciesism when they give less weight to the interests of nonhuman animals than they give to the similar interests of human beings. Note the requirement that the interests in question be “similar.” It’s not speciesism to say that normal humans have an interest in continuing to live that is different from the interests that nonhuman animals have. One might, for instance, argue that a being with the ability to think of itself as existing over time, and therefore to plan its life, and to work for future achievements, has a greater interest in continuing to live than a being who lacks such capacities. If we were to compare attitudes about speciesism today with past racist attitudes, we would have to say that we are back in the days in which the slave trade was still legal. On that basis, one might argue that to kill a normal human being who wants to go on living is more seriously wrong than killing a nonhuman animal. Whether this claim is or is not sound, it is not speciesist. But given that some human beings – most obviously, those with profound intellectual impairment – lack this capacity, or have it to a lower degree than some nonhuman animals, it would be speciesist to claim that it is always more seriously wrong to kill a member of the species Homo sapiens than it is to kill a nonhuman animal. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20990 - Posted: 05.28.2015

Barbara J. King Last Friday in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer asked which contemporary practices will be deemed "abominable" in the future, in the way that we today think of human enslavement. He then offered his own opinion: "I've long thought it will be our treatment of animals. I'm convinced that our great-grandchildren will find it difficult to believe that we actually raised, herded and slaughtered them on an industrial scale — for the eating." Krauthammer goes on to predict that meat-eating will become "a kind of exotic indulgence," because "science will find dietary substitutes that can be produced at infinitely less cost and effort." I don't often agree with Krauthammer's views, and his animal column is no exception. His breezy attitude on animal biomedical testing does animals no favors. (It's perhaps only fair to note that I have similar concerns about Alva's conclusions on animal testing from his 13.7 post published that same day.) But, still, Krauthammer does a terrific job of awakening people to many issues related to animals' suffering. And he's not alone. On April 17, I joined other scientists and activists on the radio show To the Point hosted by Warren Olney, to discuss this question: Is Animal Liberation Going Mainstream? In the 34-minute segment, we discussed the public outcry against SeaWorld's treatment of orcas, Ringling Bros.' plan to retire elephants from the circus in three years, and the rightness or wrongness of keeping animals in zoos — all issues brought up by Krauthammer in his column. © 2015 NPR

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20935 - Posted: 05.16.2015

Robin McKie The European parliament will on Monday debate a call – backed by a petition signed by 1.2 million people – to scrap animal research in the EU. The proposal has alarmed scientists, who worked for six years to set up the 2010 European directive that controls animal experimentation and welfare in the EU. Researchers fear that the petition, which was drawn up by the Italian-based Stop Vivisection European citizens’ initiative, could sway many newly elected MEPs who would then press the European commission into scrapping the directive which, in the UK, is enshrined in an amendment to the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act. “Without the directive, research using animals would be blocked and that would have terrible consequences,” said Nancy Lee, senior policy adviser at the Wellcome Trust. “New medicines for Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer and other conditions could no longer be tested. Similarly, new drugs for animals would also be blocked.” This view is backed by Dame Kay Davies, director of the MRC functional genomics unit at Oxford University. “Removal of the directive would be a significant step backwards both for animal welfare in the EU and for Europe’s leading role in advancing human and animal health,” she said in last week’s Nature. Other citizens’ initiatives, which require a minimum of a million signatures before they are heard by the European parliament, have included calls for improved water supplies and stricter speed limits in Europe.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20905 - Posted: 05.11.2015

By Gretchen Vogel BERLIN—A German neuroscientist who has been the target of animal rights activists says he is giving up on primate research. Nikos Logothetis, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, says he will conclude his current experiments on macaques “as quickly as possible” and then shift his research to rodent neural networks. In a letter last week to fellow primate researchers, Logothetis cites a lack of support from colleagues and the wider scientific community as key factors in his decision. In particular, he says the Max Planck Society—and other organizations—should pursue criminal charges against the activists who target researchers. Logothetis’s research on the neural mechanisms of perception and object recognition has used rhesus macaques with electrode probes implanted in their brains. The work was the subject of a broadcast on German national television in September that showed footage filmed by an undercover animal rights activist working at the institute. The video purported to show animals being mistreated. Logothetis has said the footage is inaccurate, presenting a rare emergency situation following surgery as typical and showing stress behaviors deliberately prompted by the undercover caregiver. (His written rebuttal is here.) The broadcast triggered protests, however, and it prompted several investigations of animal care practices at the institute. Investigations by the Max Planck Society and animal protection authorities in the state of Baden-Württemberg found no serious violations of animal care rules. A third investigation by local Tübingen authorities that led to a police raid at the institute in late January is still ongoing. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Link ID: 20882 - Posted: 05.05.2015

Brendan Borrell A campaign by animal rights activists to establish the legal personhood of chimpanzees took a bizarre turn this week, when a New York judge inadvertently opened a constitutional can of worms only to clamp it shut a day later. On 20 April, New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe signed an order forcing Stony Brook University to respond to claims by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) that two research chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, were being unlawfully detained. The Coral Springs, Florida, organization declared victory, claiming that because such an order, termed a writ of habeas corpus, can only be granted to a person in New York state, the judge had implicitly determined that the chimps were legal persons. An eruption of news coverage on 21 April sparked a backlash by legal experts claiming the significance of the order had been overblown. By that evening, Jaffe had amended the order, letting arguments on the chimps’ detainment go forward but explicitly scratching out the words WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS at the top of the document. Nature takes a look at the episode’s significance in the campaign to give animals legal rights and what it means for the research community. What is the basis for the idea of giving chimps personhood rights, rather than improving animal treatment laws? The NhRP stands apart from typical animal welfare and animal rights groups in that it narrowly focuses on getting the most intelligent, autonomous, self-aware animals recognized under the law as “persons” with specific rights, rather than things. “We are only asking for one legal right and that’s bodily liberty,” says the organization’s executive director, Natalie Prosin. Animal welfare laws in New York already allow people and organizations to obtain relief from the courts when animals are being abused or kept in poor conditions. The organization’s petition to the court, filed with affidavits from animal cognition researchers, states that keeping chimps in captivity is unlawful, independent of the conditions in which they are kept and whether animal welfare laws are being violated. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20834 - Posted: 04.23.2015

By David Grimm In a decision that effectively recognizes chimpanzees as legal persons for the first time, a New York judge today granted a pair of Stony Brook University lab animals the right to have their day in court. The ruling marks the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been covered by a writ of habeus corpus, which typically allows human prisoners to challenge their detention. The judicial action could force the university, which is believed to be holding the chimps, to release the primates, and could sway additional judges to do the same with other research animals. “This is a big step forward to getting what we are ultimately seeking: the right to bodily liberty for chimpanzees and other cognitively complex animals,” says Natalie Prosin, the Executive Director of the animal rights organization, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), which filed the case. “We got our foot in the door. And no matter what happens, that door can never be completely shut again.” Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and a noted opponent of personhood for animals, cautions against reading too much into the ruling, however. “The judge may merely want more information to make a decision on the legal personhood claim, and may have ordered a hearing simply as a vehicle for hearing out both parties in more depth,” he writes in an email to Science. “It would be quite surprising if the judge intended to make a momentous substantive finding that chimpanzees are legal persons if the judge has not yet heard the other side’s arguments.” © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20822 - Posted: 04.21.2015

Daniel Cressey Experiments that use only a small number of animals are common, but might not give meaningful results. Replace, refine, reduce: the 3 Rs of ethical animal research are widely accepted around the world. But now the message from UK funding agencies is that some experiments use too few animals, a problem that leads to wastage and low-quality results. On 15 April, the research councils responsible for channelling government funding to scientists, and their umbrella group Research Councils UK, announced changes to their guidelines for animal experiments. Funding applicants must now show that their work will provide statistically robust results — not just explain how it is justified and set out the ethical implications — or risk having their grant application rejected. The move aims to improve the quality of medical research, and will help to address widespread concerns that animals — mostly mice and rats — are being squandered in tiny studies that lack statistical power. “If the study is underpowered your results are not going to be reliable,” says Nathalie Percie du Sert, who works on experimental design at the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction (NC3Rs) of Animals in Research in London. “These animals are going to be wasted.” © 2015 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20798 - Posted: 04.15.2015

By David Grimm The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched an investigation into Harvard University’s New England Primate Research Center after several suspicious deaths at the Southborough, Massachusetts, facility. The inquiry coincides with a series of articles published by The Boston Globe, which has uncovered a number of potential animal welfare violations at the center, including a dozen dehydrated squirrel monkeys found dead in their cages or euthanized because of poor health between 1999 and 2011. In several cases it appears that the animals were not given water or were unable to drink due to malfunctioning water lines. In one incident, a monkey’s tooth caught in her jacket, preventing her from drinking. Some of these animals were the subject of a 2014 Veterinary Pathology paper on the impact of dehydration on lab animals. The journal says it is now investigating this study. The primate center is set to close at the end of next month, though—according to the Globe—the university blames finances, not animal care problems. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20791 - Posted: 04.14.2015

By Michael Erard Freckle, a male rhesus monkey, was greeted warmly by his fellow monkeys at his new home in Amherst, Massachusetts, when he arrived in 2000. But he didn’t return the favor: He terrorized his cagemate by stealing his fleece blanket and nabbed each new blanket the researchers added, until he had 10 and his cagemate none. After a few months, Freckle had also acquired a new name: Ivan, short for Ivan the Terrible. Freckle/Ivan, now at Melinda Novak’s primate research lab at the University of Massachusetts, may be unusual in having two names, but all of his neighbors have at least one moniker, Novak says. “You can say, ‘Kayla and Zoe are acting out today,’ and everybody knows who Kayla and Zoe are,” Novak says. “If you say ‘ZA-56 and ZA-65 are acting up today,’ people pause.” Scientists once shied away from naming research animals, and many of the millions of mice and rats used in U.S. research today go nameless, except for special individuals. But a look at ​many facilities suggests that most of the ​other ​891,161 ​U.S. ​research animals ​have proper names​, including nonhuman primates, dogs, pigs, rabbits, cats, and sheep​. Rats are Pia, Splinter, Oprah, Persimmon. Monkeys are Nyah, Nadira, Tas, Doyle. One octopus is called Nixon. Breeder pairs of mice are “Tom and Katie,” or “Brad and Angelina.” If you’re a mouse with a penchant for escape, you’ll be Mighty Mouse or Houdini. If you’re a nasty mouse, you’ll be Lucifer or Lucifina. Animals in research are named after shampoos, candy bars, whiskeys, family members, movie stars, and superheroes. They’re named after Russians (Boris, Vladimir, Sergei), colors, the Simpsons, historical figures, and even rival scientists. These unofficial names rarely appear in publications, except sometimes in field studies of primates. But they’re used daily. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20625 - Posted: 02.27.2015

By Jocelyn Kaiser The number of animals used by the top federally funded U.S. biomedical research institutions has risen 73% over 15 years, a “dramatic increase” driven mostly by more mice, concludes an animal rights group. They say researchers are not doing enough to reduce their use of mice, which are exempt from some federal animal protection laws. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which collected the data, says the analysis by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is “inappropriate.” The analysis was published online today in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Although the Animal Welfare Act requires that the U.S. Department of Agriculture track research labs’ use of cats, dogs, and nonhuman primates, smaller vertebrates—including mice, rats, fish, and birds bred for research—are exempt. To get a sense of the trends, PETA filed Freedom of Information Act requests for data from inventories that NIH-funded institutions must submit to NIH every 4 years to receive an “assurance” allowing them to do animal research. Looking at the 25 top NIH-funded institutions, PETA found these institutions housed a daily average of about 74,600 animals between 1997 and 2003; that leaped to an average of about 128,900 a day by 2008 to 2012, a 73% increase. (Because institutions don’t report at the same time, PETA combined figures over three time periods.) © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20616 - Posted: 02.26.2015