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Animal rights group wants cocaine-addicted rat research defunded
From Amanda Shaw, FoxCarolina.com, May 25, 2023
COLUMBIA, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - A national watchdog group wants federal
funding pulled from a faculty-led University of South Carolina research
project involving the electroshock of cocaine-addicted rats.
The project, aimed at studying how addiction affects the brain, is currently
on hiatus after USC received an anonymous complaint in November. A
subsequent investigation revealed the rats were being shocked for longer
than allowed under protocols implemented by the university’s Institutional
Animal Care and Use Committee.
USC modified the research protocol and said additional oversight will be
required if the psychology professor resumes the study.
The nonprofit Stop Animal Exploitation Now (SAEN), which has called on USC
to shut the research down permanently, is asking the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) to revoke a new $248,216 grant awarded to the project on May
16. SAEN says they would like to see the money reallocated to a clinical
project that does not involve animals being electrically shocked.
SAEN is also calling for an investigation into how the annual funding for
the project has been spent.
The NIH database does not report any publications or clinical studies that
have resulted from the experimentation so far, however, the professor
leading the research co-authored an article in 2019 about a similar study.
He has received more than a million dollars in funding from the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of NIH, for research over the last five
years.
“Since nothing has been produced, serious questions must be raised as to how
the approximately $250,000 per year funding of this grant has been spent,”
said SAEN Executive Director Michael Budkie in the letter.
FOX Carolina has reached out to USC and NIH for comment. We are awaiting a
response.
In a statement earlier this month, a spokesperson for USC said the
university is committed to the ethical treatment and responsible use of
animals on campus. USC has been continuously accredited for 39 years by the
Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care
International (AAALAC), a private nonprofit that oversees the humane
treatment of animals in science.
The use of animals in scientific research is a topic of longstanding
controversy.
Organizations like the NIH and the AAALAC support the ethical use of animals
in research experiments when there is no alternative. The NIH says grant
applications for animal research projects must include information on why
another model or approach cannot be used and a plan to minimize “any
potential discomfort, distress, injury, and pain the animals may
experience.”
Groups like SAEN would like to see an end to all animal experimentation.
“Ethical treatment of animals does not include electric shock,” Budkie said.
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