Should rats and mice be added to the Animal Welfare Act for research?

Yes

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by Ardeth Baxter

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As PETA president Ingrid Newkirk once provocatively but quite accurately remarked, "When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." In other words, mammals may vary widely in types and levels of intelligence, but they are equal when it comes to their sentience levels. There is no question that protection for lab rats and mice should be included in the Animal Welfare Act. The reason they are not included is because it would mean more money having to be spent on humane protocols to lessen their suffering and reduce their death rates.

In the United States alone, it is estimated that tens of millions of rats and mice are killed every year in the name of research, and the number is, sadly, steadily increasing because of the popularity of genetic engineering. Rats and mice, along with birds and cold-blooded animals-who are also not legally protected by the AWA-constitute the vast majority of animals used in research. Since rats and mice are legally considered inferior to other lab animals, their deaths are not even officially counted.

The irony is that, as Newkirk has stated, there is no difference in rats and mice regarding their ability to feel pain when compared to dogs, cats, livestock, rabbits, monkeys, great apes and other species used in medical research, including humans. Therefore there is no ethical reason that they should not be given even the limited welfare protection afforded by the AWA.

One of the evils of not allowing rats and mice to be legally defined as animals is that they have become nothing but objects to be bred and exploited by researchers with impunity in virtually any way they wish. For example, there are patented mice created through the questionable wonders of biotechnology that include "Oncomouse", which is programmed to spontaneously develop cancer; "Flaky", a mouse bred to develop serious skin problems; "Stargazer", a mouse bioengineered with autistic symptoms; and "knockout mice", which are missing one or more key genes. These unfortunate mutant mice are ordered in bulk by lab personnel for experimental purposes, just like test tubes and Petri dishes.

What's so special about rats and mice? Anyone who's cared for a pet rat or mouse, as I have, knows that they are highly intelligent animals capable of learning and responding to their own names. They also learn concepts and activities quickly and remember them. They are very sociable and family-oriented, and, just like humans, have a strong need for companionship. Rats and mice have a sophisticated communications system using smell, touch and high-frequency sounds undetectable to the human ear. As pets, rats and mice are affectionate and playful, and have even been known to die of a broken heart if their human companion abandons them or gives them away. Personal hygiene is very important to them, and they groom themselves at least as much as cats. Don't these animals, who have, after all, not volunteered to be research subjects and are entirely at the mercy of lab personnel, deserve to be treated at the very least with compassion and respect?

But the principal issue underlying using rats and mice in research is that it is truly a waste of their lives. Because no matter what species of animal is used, animal research has actually vastly retarded the progress of medical knowledge and led to unnecessary human illness and death. For all our physiological similarities, human and nonhuman animals differ greatly in their reactions to drugs and disease pathogens. Animal research is a medieval method of testing that, hopefully, will gradually be phased out as more scientists publicly acknowledge this dirty little secret and more non-animal experimental modalities are developed. As former animal researchers C. Ray Greek, MD and Jean Swingle Greek, DVM point out in their breakthrough book "Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals", historically, major medical advances have been made possible not through animal research but by clinical observation, human drug surveillance, epidemiology, pathology, preventive medicine and sometimes through sheer serendipity.

So yes, lab rats and mice should get the legal protections they so richly deserve, but with the ultimate goal of putting a merciful end to an unnecessary evil: primitive, outdated animal research. Only then will scientists be free to truly increase their knowledge and work for the good of humanity.

API4animals .org/a2_research.php

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