New Front in Battle Over Studies of Animals

Activists take aim at nonresearch colleges

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By JEFFREY BRAINARD

Far from the front lines of the nasty fight over laboratory-animal experiments at large research universities, activists are strategically drawing some teaching-oriented institutions into the same battle.

Amherst College, Fairfield University, Francis Marion University, and 10 other institutions, none of which are known for conducting animal experiments, recently signed a pledge not to subject any research animals to "severe" unrelieved pain or distress. The pledge was written by the Humane Society of the United States, which has sent it to a total of 301 presidents at similar institutions.

Signing the pledge was easy, said officials on some of those campuses, because no such research went on there. And that is just what the advocacy group is counting on: a wave of no-fuss pledge signings that will put pressure on larger universities, which do conduct extensive animal research, to follow suit.

"It's a place to start," says Kathleen M. Conlee, director of program management for animal-research issues at the group. "We will, over time, go up the ladder to those institutions in a different category."

Letters from the society describing its pledge drive, mailed beginning in March, have yielded a modest response. Of the recipient institutions, 39 have responded in some way: 13 have signed the pledge, 18 have promised that they will respond, and eight have declined, Ms. Conlee says.

The document attempts to strike a collegial approach — for example, the society offers to discuss with signatory institutions any instances of noncompliance it learns about and not to publicize them. That's a different approach from the picketing and vandalism that more-extreme activist groups have carried on at the University of California at Los Angeles and other campuses in a bid to end all animal testing.

'Reasonable and Symbolic'

The colleges that have signed the pledge offer a variety of reasons for doing so.

"I said to myself, How could I not sign this and have a conscience?" says John M. Carfora, director of the office of sponsored research at Amherst. He said he hoped his signature might influence researchers elsewhere to reflect anew on the necessity of unrelieved pain in their laboratory animals.

Like many liberal-arts colleges, Amherst does not do animal experiments that inflict pain. Five faculty members are carrying out behavioral studies with mice, fish, and frogs. One study involves investigating mice's sense of taste, work that might provide insights relevant to controlling obesity in humans.

At Fairfield, signing the pledge was in keeping with the values of the Jesuit institution, says Raymond P. Poincelot, interim dean of arts and sciences and a professor of biology.

"Compassion and caring for others covers animals as well as people," he said.

Officials of Francis Marion University, a public institution in South Carolina, view the pledge as "a humane gesture" that is "reasonable and symbolic," says Elizabeth I. Cooper, vice president for public and community affairs. Faculty members there have done some surgery on anesthetized animals, she adds.

However, she says, the pledge, which offers some examples of procedures likely to cause severe pain, is not "a legal document" that would prevent the university from one day expanding the scope of its research.

Other institutions chose not to sign the pledge, to avoid calling attention to their animal research. One of them is Valdosta State University.

The Georgia institution follows federal regulations for laboratory-animal welfare, says Barbara H. Gray, director of grants and contracts. She declines to elaborate on the use of animals there however. "This is a very sensitive issue for universities," she says, "and frankly, if you can fly under the radar, you'll be better off."

Scientists and veterinarians at research universities say unrelieved pain is unfortunate but necessary in some avenues of biomedical research — for example, in studies of cancer. They say they minimize the number of experiments involving pain and distress, and closely monitor the animals involved. Federal regulations allow experiments with unrelieved pain if they are conducted with proper oversight by veterinarians and institutional committees.

Still, "I think it's a useful effort if this generates discussion in universities that says, Let's take a harder look at unrelieved pain and see what we can do," says Lawrence G. Carbone, a senior veterinarian at the University of California at San Francisco, a research institution that uses laboratory animals extensively.

Defining and Measuring Pain

Academic and commercial laboratories are required by law to report all pain caused by animal experiments to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2006 they used 73,640 animals, or about 7 percent of all research animals, in experiments that caused unrelieved pain or distress.

However, that number is probably an undercount. Congress specifically excluded rats and mice — the vast majority of animals used in university research — from the reporting requirement. The animals required to be reported include primates, cats, and dogs, but most of the animals in the reports were guinea pigs and hamsters. The Humane Society of the United States' pledge applies to all animals.

The total number of animals with unrelieved pain actually fell from the 103,272 reported in 2002. But the society and other groups have periodically done studies suggesting that some research universities underreport the number of experiments involving unrelieved pain and distress involving species that are covered by the Agriculture Department's regulations.

A Matter of Wording

Controversy about how to define and justify research involving unrelieved pain and distress to animals has gone on for decades. And for image-conscious universities, the debate does not take place in a vacuum: Polls indicate that a majority of the public supports medical research using animals, but not when they experience unrelieved pain.

The society's pledge includes, for example, a list of experimental procedures that it says should be considered to "typically" cause severe unrelieved pain or distress. Those include giving animals severe burns, arthritis, infectious diseases, or inflammation. (The pledge describes "severe" pain as intense pain lasting for more than a few seconds, and "moderate" pain as persisting for hours or days.)

It's a safe bet that many research institutions will not agree to rule out such experiments, says Dr. Carbone, who directed San Francisco's oversight office for laboratory-animal welfare from 2000 to 2003.

In many instances, universities see no alternative way to conduct the research. What's more, the pledge's wording itself presents a problem for those universities, Dr. Carbone says, because some studies using procedures discouraged under the pledge would not, in fact, cause animals unrelieved pain or distress. Besides, he adds, detecting pain on the basis of animals' behavior is often more of an art than a science.

Ms. Conlee, of the Humane Society of the United States, acknowledges that point, which, she says, is why the society's pledge offers examples, but no strict definition, of procedures likely to cause severe pain. The document also acknowledges that "there is not a clear distinction" between severe and moderate pain.

Despite the disagreements, the society and many researchers agree that some confusion and controversy over the reported numbers of animals used could be alleviated if the federal government clarified its definition of pain. The society advocates a requirement to grade pain as mild, moderate, or severe, as is required by Canadian regulations.

In 2000 the U.S. Department of Agriculture invited comment on changing the definition, including whether researchers should be required to report "intensity and duration" of pain. But the department never followed up with a new rule.