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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
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Posted by pseudoname on February 21, 2006, at 10:08:59
Over at "The Scientist", there's a couple articles on the regulation of the welfare of animals and their use in scientific research. They don't mention psychiatric treatments explicitly, but of course psych research uses tons (literal tons) of rats, mice, and non-human primates.
The one guy says the U.S. Animal Welfare Act requires each university to appoint an animal care & use committee (ACUC) from people who don't necessarily understand experimental research or know how animals are used, with the result that lots of research gets delayed for months or can't ever start. If I understood him right, he says that current U.S. regulations require that all animals used for any physiological study be killed at the end of it! Even if they could be kept and used in other experiments. The purpose of this regulation, he says, is to make it EXPENSIVE to use animals for any research, so labs will be discouraged and give up.
He points out that regulations about lab animals are many times more restrictive than laws about FOOD animals, who are allowed to have miserable, unnatural, stressful lives with unnecessary pain. Whereas "All animal experimenters have an incentive to reduce the amount of stress an animal is subjected to – through refinement – because a stressed animal will be less likely to behave or respond normally and might therefore skew results."
The other article talks about animal welfare as a principle. "It is not possible to advocate animal welfare and at the same time give animals untested drugs or diseases, or slice them open to test a new surgical procedure." But he is in favor of using animals in research. He just thinks that incorporating "animal welfare" language in research protocols is dishonest.
•"Time to Abandon the Three Rs" by Stuart W.G. Derbyshire, 1 Feb 2006: http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23083/
•"How regulation hamstrings animal research" by Göran Hellekant, 15 Feb 2006: http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23126/(By the way, all of THE SCIENTIST archives are free online for the moment as a 20th anniversary celebration! Usually $20/year.)
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