ACTION ALERT:
Contact:
Associate Vice President Hull
[email protected]
SAMPLE MESSAGE:
The Rensselaer Institute must take action to permanently terminate all animal use privileges for all staff connected to experiment INT-001-17. This project must be ended because it involved inadequately trained personnel, failure to follow proper procedures, etc. Sloppy actions like this should not be allowed to masquerade as "science."
RPI cancer study suspended after lapses found
From Rachel Silberstein, TimesUnion.com, November 6, 2019
Dead mice raised concerns for veterinarian assigned to oversee use of lab animals.
A cancer study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's biomedical research
labs involving mice was temporarily suspended last spring when an internal
investigation found several lapses in protocol, according to a report filed
with the federal agency that oversees the welfare of lab animals.
RPI's in-house veterinarian flagged several issues at the facility to the
school's Institutional Animal Care Use Committee (IACUC), which oversees
compliance in animal research, after one mouse died and another was
euthanized after showing signs of malnourishment and dehydration, according
to the document.
The report cited an internal investigation that uncovered after-the-fact
record-keeping, poor training of researchers, and the use of mouse strains
not approved for the particular research project.
"There were incidences of animal misidentification and other errors in
record keeping," wrote RPI Associate Vice President of Research Robert Hull
in his summary of the investigation's findings and corrective actions taken.
The investigation uncovered communication breakdown among student
researchers, attending veterinarian Neda Bajalo, and Prof. Xavier Intes, who
oversees the cancer imaging lab.
For example, Bajalo "brought to the attention of IACUC that students within
Dr. Intes' group had placed their initials against procedures for which they
were either not listed on the protocol and/or not adequately trained," the
report states.
The report was brought to light by the animal rights organization Stop
Animal Exploitation Now, which has called on RPI officials to conduct an
independent inquiry into what happened; to revoke the animal-use privileges
of the researchers involved; and to release full veterinary histories of the
dead mice.
"We get these reports relevant to every research project in the U.S.
Suspending a protocol is something that doesn't happen often at all, which
puts this facility in very bad company," SAEN executive director Michael A.
Budkie said.
The communications issues detailed in the report included students' claims
that the instructions for record-keeping, delivered orally, were unclear and
they were unable to get questions answered. For four days during the study,
the records failed to make it clear whether or not the animals had been
correctly returned to their cages. In at least one occasion, the start time
for food deprivation was noted, but not the end time. Mice could not be
deprived of food for more than 20 hours, according to the protocol.
Faculty members will be required to attend communication workshops and
animal welfare workshops as corrective measures.
The investigation also turned up problems with the imaging lab's anesthesia
vaporizer, which had not been inspected in several years. Faulty delivery of
anesthesia resulted in a prolonged anesthetic process.
RPI officials wrote that they were "confident" this issue did not lead to
animal suffering since researchers always measured the depth of anesthesia
by checking "the paw pinching reflex" before starting an experiment and
measured animals' breathing rate during the procedure.
"Adverse events were never observed," according to the report.
The machines have since been serviced and passed all functional tests on May
2.
In a statement, RPI said that the institute holds itself to "the very
highest standards of research integrity and compliance, particularly with
respect to animal welfare."
"On learning of the concerns described in the report to the Office of
Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) of the National Institute of Health, we
immediately launched an intensive investigation," RPI officials said in a
statement. "We implemented corrective action plans to prevent any future
recurrence. As part of this process, the protocols under which the research
group was operating were suspended, until the necessary corrective measures
had been established."
While records appear to have been modified after the fact, researchers noted
that the investigation did not find that anyone had intentionally falsified
records.
"We self-reported these events and corrective actions in an extensive report
to OLAW. The response from OLAW concurred with the actions taken by the
institution and acknowledged our thorough response," RPI officials said in a
statement. "We believe this issue has been adequately addressed and
resolved."