Rodent remedy

Rats, mice often used in scientific research at MSU to study diseases, treatment options

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Soon, lab animals might not spend their entire lives in the laboratory. Thanks to one student and a mistake in a shipment of hamsters to an MSU lab for a research project, the university might create an official policy for placing rodents unneeded for research up for adoption. “The researchers only needed male hamsters, but for some reason they sent female hamsters too,” said junior Erin Schultz, an animal technician who works primarily with rodents in an on-campus animal facility. “The females would’ve just been euthanized — and I didn’t want to see them euthanized because I thought they were really cute.”

Schultz found homes for the hamsters and received a fair amount of interest from other students in adopting more animals, Director of Campus Animal Resources Rob Werner said.

“It heightened my awareness of the issue,” said Werner, an MSU-attending veterinarian. “The main thing is we want to make sure we try to do what is best for the animals.”

Adoption policy

The university occasionally adopts out dogs and cats – but it’s relatively rare to adopt out rodents, although there is an unstated policy that the university will try, Werner said.

Most of the adopted rodents have gone to people who have worked with the researchers and know them personally.

There are several factors to consider when deciding how and who should receive them. It can be difficult to know whether a student will properly care for a rodent, which requires different care than a dog or cat, Werner said.

“Occasionally people have pet snakes and think, ‘Can I get free food for it?’” Werner said. “And sometimes kids around the fraternity house get a rat and want to see if it likes beer or not.”

MSU also has a policy against pets in dorms, aside from non-poisonous, non-carnivorous fish — and the university could be held liable if an adopted animal bites someone, Werner said.

Because of such issues, no more adoptions of lab animals will be permitted until an official adoption policy is defined and established with the Institutional Animal Care & Use Committee.

If research animals are not adopted, there are two other options: The lab can house and care for the animal until it dies naturally, or the animal can be euthanized.

Since it can be expensive to maintain the animal until it dies, and to prevent overcrowding in the labs, the animals are typically painlessly euthanized, Werner said.

Animals in research

Rodents are the animals of choice used in scientific research, said Marc Breedlove, an MSU Rosenberg professor of neuroscience.

Breedlove is the outgoing chair of the animal care committee, which oversees all research on campus that uses animals.

He said rats used to be the most common animals used but more mice are now being utilized.

“At every university all over the world, people are using mice for research,” he said.

Mice live for two years, which means scientists can compress the time span of ailments and disorders, Werner said.

An example is the study of tumors — in humans, tumors don’t start developing until a person is 40 years old or older, but mouse tumors develop in much less time, Werner said.

Mice also can be genetically manipulated with relative ease, meaning scientists can study things in mice they couldn’t study in dogs, cats or humans, Werner said.

For example, scientists have developed a mouse with no immune system, meaning they can transplant human tumors into a mouse and the mouse’s body won’t reject it, he said.

The debate

Werner works with University Laboratory Animal Resources, which cares for the animals used for research on campus and oversees the research to ensure the animals are treated humanely.

The university lab works directly with the animal care committee.

Of course, research on live animals is a hot topic.

Rats, mice and hamsters are not covered in the Animal Welfare Act, according to social relations and policy sophomore Mitch Goldsmith. Goldsmith is the event coordinator for Students Promoting Animal Rights, or SPAR, a registered student organization.

The Animal Welfare Act is the current law that protects animals from undue suffering. Goldsmith said rats, mice and hamsters aren’t in the act, which means there are no checks for human use.

Nick Vitale, a second-year veterinary graduate student, said he supports research on live animals. He said he wants to go into anatomic pathology, meaning he would do research on animal carcasses. Vitale said he hasn’t done research on live animals.

“I understand people who aren’t in favor of animal research, but you have to think about advances in medicine,” Vitale said. “I would ask right away, ‘Do you take any drugs, do you have family members who take drugs, do you have any friends or family members who have had surgery?’”

Vitale said it’s important to utilize the resources available for research, which include animal testing.

Regulating both human and animal testing also is important, Vitale said — and while there is pressure from some people and groups to stop using animals for research, the fact that veterinarians closely monitor lab animals in any facility justifies using the animals for research.

“I’m not saying we should thrust ourselves back into the Dark Ages — if the medicine is there and a cure is there, we should take advantage of it,” Goldsmith said. “We’re just asking the government to give more credit to other forms of testing and to diversify funding.”

The process of creating and testing a new drug for human use doesn’t start with animals.

When researching tumors, for example, research starts at the cellular level with tissue cultures, then successful experiments move up to mice; larger animals; terminally sick humans at low levels, with their consent; and eventually terminally sick humans at higher levels, Werner said.

Using animals for research makes the research process much more efficient, he said, and the target for most studies is humans.

Animals used for research are bred for lab testing, Vitale said.

“It’s important to use animals (for research) because there is no other replacement for a body when testing things,” Vitale said. “We’re all mammals, we all kind of function the same way — frankly, there are only minor differences.”

Research on campus

Almost every science department at MSU has at least some animal research, Werner said.

The use of animals is more rare in chemistry, unless the department is working on anti-cancer drugs or something similar, he said.

MSU’s laboratory animal program is similar to programs at other universities, Werner said. At the University of Michigan, animal research is almost exclusively in biomedicine.

Because of MSU’s extensive agriculture programs, MSU works with more large animals than other schools, Werner said.

Still, rodents account for about 95 percent of the animals used in research on campus, he said. In total, there are about 3,000 cages of rodents in various facilities around campus with each cage housing one to five rodents.

Any experiments using animals for research on campus must first be approved by the animal care committee.

For any use of animals in research or teaching, a person must describe in writing what will be done with the animal and why.

The committee requires the researcher to look for alternatives for the animals, and if the researcher has considered alternatives, the committee approves the proposal, Breedlove said. Approved proposals are valid for three years.

“The vast majority of researched animals experience no discomfort at all,” Breedlove said. “If anything is done to the animals that will cause discomfort, the committee requires the researcher to provide anesthesia or to give scientific reasons they can’t. In my experience, no one ever tries to do an experiment without giving anesthesia.”

The animal care committee also requires the proposal to explain why the researcher needs to do the experiments, to prove the experiments haven’t been done before and to state exactly what will be done during the experiments, Breedlove said.

“Our job is to assure the animals are treated as humanely as possible,” Breedlove said. “Anyone who submits a proposal, including me, 20 people’s eyes look at the proposal and always find things that need clarification or changing.”

Goldsmith said SPAR is compiling a list of reforms for the committee.

Reforms on the list include: increased transparency of the animal care committee and the university in general, increased student presence including students on the committee, student involvement in facility inspections and as well as considerations for the animal’s suffering balanced against the proposal’s advantages.

According to Goldsmith, MSU was cited twice for violations of the Animal Welfare Act, once in 2006 and once in 2007.

In 2006, 66 mink died from neglect, and in 2007, a puppy died when it fell into an unmonitored drainage hole, Goldsmith said.

“Why would this happen if researchers cared about these animals?” Goldsmith said.

Much of the animal rights activism has been positive for animal research, Werner said.

“Most polls show people are in favor of animal testing, as long as it’s done humanely and the animals are essential to use for the research,” Werner said. “That’s what I want — what researchers want.”

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