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Susan Herbst, PresidentAnimal research watchdog group calls for end of UConn research that violated protocols
From Kathleen Megan, Courant.com, November 13, 2018An animal research watchdog group is calling for the termination of a
UConn research project which the university has said was not in compliance
with approved protocols.
The group, called “Stop Animal Exploitation Now,” is urging the permanent
termination of the project and the return of more than $424,000 in federal
funding.
In April, UConn’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee voted to suspend the research based on reports that student surgeons had been directed to withhold pre-operative pain-killers from mice and to provide a small dose of pain relief after surgery “only if the mice appeared to be in pain,” according to a letter from Wesley G. Byerly, UConn’s associate vice president for research integrity and regulatory affairs.
“It is not clear how student surgeons were instructed to assess pain in a … post-surgical mouse,” Byerly said in the April 26 letter which was sent to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare with the National Institutes of Health.
Byerly said an investigation followed that showed that analgesia records
from February through April 2018 that had stated that a dose of a painkiller
had never been given were retroactively altered to show that full doses had
been administered.
The letter said that the principal investigator on the research said that in
Feb. 2018, she enacted a protocol change to withhold surgical and at times
post-surgical doses of painkillers due to a series of unexpected mice
deaths.
Byerly said the principal investigator enacted these changes without an
approved modification.
UConn has not released the name of the principal investigator, citing a 2014
Supreme Court ruling upheld in 2016 that UConn Health was justified in
withholding animal researchers’ names if, as provided by Freedom of
Information law, there are reasonable grounds to believe disclosure might
result in a safety risk.
In a letter to UConn President Susan Herbst, Michael Budkie, a co-founder of
Stop Animal Exploitation Now, said “the deliberate failure to utilize
approved analgesia is heinous. This is nothing short of intentionally
causing unnecessary pain and suffering in animals.”
Budkie said the failure to administer painkillers and the alteration of
records demonstrates “willful and intentional violations of regulations, as
well as an effort to escape oversight by intentionally falsifying records.
“The withholding of pain relief was not accidental, it was intentional,”
Budkie wrote. “The falsification of records was not accidental, it was
intentional.”
Byerly responded to Budkie’s letter saying that “UConn conducted a full
review and reported its findings to the appropriate regulatory organizations
“in a timely and candid manner.”
Byerly said that UConn imposed a series of consequences, including
suspending the research and requiring supervision, imposing strict
retraining requirements, and mandating a detailed written improvement plan
and other steps.
In a letter dated May 9, Byerly wrote again to the Office of Laboratory
Animal Welfare at the National Institutes of Health, stating that those
requirements had been met, the suspension had been lifted, and the principal
investigator had been notified that she could resume research.
UConn spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz said the university “takes compliance
matters very seriously, and has been recognized by its national accrediting
agency for what it has called an exemplary program.”
She said that UConn’s report to the regulatory agencies “reflect one rare
but unfortunate instance. UConn’s high standards in operating its research
enterprise allowed the university to quickly discover, investigate, and
address the issues at hand.”
She said the university did not have to repay any federal grant money in the
matter.
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