ACTION ALERT:
Contact the USDA to Demand a Maximum FINE against Arizona State University:Animal watchdog group files complaint
over ASU's treatment of lab animals
From Isaac Windes and Nicole Shewood, SatePress.com,
September 18, 2018
ASU could face fines following a complaint that the university allegedly
violated the Animal Welfare Act, which was filed by an animal rights
advocacy group to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The group, Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!, also known as SAEN, filed a
complaint in August after it obtained new documents that detailed several
incidents, including a fight between two primates as well as a incident
involving a rabbit chewing a soda can left in its cage.
The group filed the complaint after receiving documents through filing a
public record request for internal ASU communications, including incident
reports.
Documents provided by ASU and SAEN, including USDA agriculture inspection
reports, showed that the incidents were promptly reported to federal
governing bodies and investigated. As a result, ASU was cleared for those
incidents at the time.
ASU said in an emailed statement that the University adheres to government
regulations regarding animal safety, and that it always follows protocol to
protect the animals being used for in vivo experimentation.
In vivo experimental methods encompass any experiment that is tested on a
living thing.
A USDA official said in an email that they plan to inspect the facility
again at some point in the future following the complaint.
“The oversight committee responsible for ensuring animal safety, care and
welfare is the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee,” an ASU
spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “All faculty intending to use
animals for research or teaching purposes must submit plans and gain
approval from IACUC before performing their studies.”
This is not the first time that ASU has experience controversy over its use
of animal test subjects. in 2009 ASU was criticized by People For the
Ethical Treatment of Animals for its use of rabbits, frogs, mice and rats in
biology labs and in early 2018 was cited for alleged inhuman treatment of a
chinchilla.
But Michael Budkie, the co-founder and executive director of the animal
advocacy group that made the complaint, said the remedies don't go far
enough.
Budkie said he had two goals in filing the complaint.
“Obviously we believed that the general public has a right to know what's
going on in laboratories since for the most part we are paying for them,”
Budkie said. “And so we want the general public to find out about what goes
on inside the Arizona State University laboratories. In addition to that, we
believe that laboratories are governed by laws and when they break those
laws they should be penalized. And so we're seeking the maximum penalty
against Arizona State University.”
Budkie said that with modern science, in vivo testing is no longer needed to
do novel and accurate scientific research. There are other computational,
also known as in silico, methods that are more modern and humane approaches.
Budkie said that animal research was “old technology at best, and we believe
that universities should switch to newer technologies such as organ-on-chip
technology.”
Organ-on-chip technology is an in vitro, or in glass, method for mimicking
the human body on a computer chip. This method allows researchers to run
their tests on a non-sentient being.
But there are some in the scientific community who believe that in silico
and in vitro methods are not as accurate as in vivotesting.
The director of the Center for Food Security and Public Health and the
executive director of the Institute for International Cooperation in Animal
Biologics, James Roth, said he is a supporter of in vivo testing in some
situations.
"The people that say it's too complicated or that you can use computers or
modeling, that does work for a few things, but there are situations where
the only way to get answers is to use actual animals,” Roth said.
An ASU official touted research that supports the use of animal
experimentation.
“In the U.S., the vast majority of the significant medical breakthroughs we
experience today result from animal research studies that laid the vital
groundwork before human clinical trials and FDA approval,” the spokesperson
said. “Our faculty are pursuing research that could have a profound impact
on the quality of life for people afflicted with devastating diseases like
cancer, Alzheimer's and the world’s No. 1 killer, infectious diseases.”
The spokesperson went on to say, “many ASU innovations including an Ebola
therapeutic, Zika vaccine research and cancer research studies simply would
not have been possible without animal research testing.”
But there are others, such as Budkie, who believe the exact opposite.
“Animals are not human beings in little fur coats and their anatomy and
physiology is different than ours,” Budkie said. “They react to drugs
differently than we do."
The vice president of laboratory investigations cases at PETA, Alka Chandna,
agreed with the notion that in vivo testing is no longer needed, citing the
breakthrough technologies of organ-on-chip.
Chandna said the current status of medicine and medical discovery "is at the
cellular level, at the molecular level and this is the level at which we are
different from other animals," citing a National Institutes of Health
analysis that showed mice are a poor substitute for humans when studying
sepsis, an inflammatory disease.
And because of that, she said, animal model results from clinical trials are
not relevant to humans. Chandna suggested the possibility of using
supercomputer in silico methods as an alternative to animal testing.
According to Roth, this issue is not one of science, but ethics.
“Everybody's entitled to their opinion on the ethics ... and that's fine,
but they shouldn't be using science to justify why there should be no animal
research," Roth said. "If they firmly believe that ethically, then that's
the position they're entitled to hold. But ... the ethics and the scientific
aspects shouldn't get confused.”
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