A lot happens behind closed doors in a science laboratory. There are rows of petri dishes, suction-sealed specimens, vials of this and that, the odd explosion, hypotheses galore from white-dressed humans, and rodents on which to test it all.
Be it rats or mice, these small animals donate their living (and dead) bodies to science. They serve as an avatar for human disease and infection and a gateway to all manner of drugs, treatments and cures. But the realities for rodents, and the scientists responsible for them, are not always rosy.
“I saw my rats every day for eight weeks, including weekends. You don’t necessarily bond with them, but they go from being really afraid of you to really comfortable in your presence,” former honours student Wardah Nasir told Crikey.
Nasir had 26 lab rats to experiment on and care for as part of her research into the prevention and treatment of birth injuries. To make scientific headway, she needed to stimulate birth in rats: “Basically we had to injure the rats by putting a balloon catheter into their vagina. When they were under, I compartmentalised, but after the fact I was always like, ‘Oh my God, these are rats.’ I needed therapy.”
Laboratory-based rodent research is bound by ethical rigour and clear-cut codes, but that doesn’t make it easy for researchers to draw the line at science experiments.
Role of a rodent
Most science takes decades to make it from ideation in a lab to application and uptake in the real world. In between is round after round of experimentation and replication. Phase one is discovery, phase two and three are animal testing — first small (rodents) and then large (something like a sheep) — and finally comes clinical trials.
The appeal of rats and mice is their likeness (physiologically) to humans and their ability to replicate fast. They’re easy to breed, inbreed and crossbreed and in no time at all there are litters galore. They also mature from babies to adults at a rate of knots.
“Eight weeks in a rat is like four years in a human, so you can see a lot of change in a short time,” said Nasir.
Supporting role of a scientist
Researchers working with rodents are bound by the “three Rs”: replacement, reduction and refinement. In short: don’t use rodents you don’t need and care for the rodents you do.
“If you have a massive study and you fall short of statistical significance by two mice, then that experiment is kind of a waste. There needs to be enough mice for viable and publishable results but no more,” said a lab-based infectious disease researcher who spoke to Crikey on condition of anonymity. Confidentiality protocols in their institution prohibited them from speaking freely about the relationship they maintain with their 60-odd mice.
There is a strict harm-reduction regime in place for both the life and death of rodents. Scientists feed them, weigh them (by putting them in a little box that sits on a pair of scales), and check for signs of ill health or out-of-sorts behaviour such as squinted eyes or splayed-back ears.
“I had to do six months of intensive training to learn how to handle and hold these rats without injuring them, how to soothe them, how to look for behavioural cues. All this before I could care for them,” said Nasir.
The intensity of monitoring depends on the experiment and whether or not drugs need to be administered or surgery done, but the general rule of thumb is to check in at the same time each day for consistency.
On a surgical day, Nasir said the check-ins turn hourly: “If the experiment was booked from 9 to 12, I’d go in, say hello to the ladies, pick them up, put them under anaesthesia, make sure they couldn’t feel anything because it’s very invasive, do the experiment, make sure they weren’t in shock, make sure they’re not dead, monitor for two hours, recover them, and monitor for another four hours.”
On top of harm reduction are clear red lines and “ethical endpoints”. If a rodent loses more than 15% of its starting body weight, a scientist is ethically obliged to kill them, irrespective of whether the study has reached its natural end.
Let’s talk feelings
The same scientists that care for these rodents are also responsible for their pain, suffering and timely death. Lab researchers try to compartmentalise and maintain a purely practical approach, but it’s not always easy to juggle these conflicting emotions.
“Performing a procedure like an injection can be distressing because the rodents are awake and sometimes they squeal,” said the infectious diseases researcher.
To inject a rodent, you have to “scruff” it. “Just like a dog or cat, it has flappy skin at the back of its neck. You pinch that flap of skin, turn their head down towards them, pinch their tail with your pinkie so they can’t move, and then you inject them.” As the infectious disease researcher explains, that doesn’t sit well with them.
Death was (at times) described as an easier deal because the process was largely procedural. Gold standard is to cover the cage with a cloth (for the benefit of both scientists and fellow rodents watching on) and gas them with carbon dioxide.
“Once I did lift the cloth and I started crying my eyes out because I saw the last breath it took. It was the first time I saw the life drain out of a living thing. You know they’re not in pain, but that was not a fun time,” said Nasir.
For the infectious disease researcher, most triggering was the bin bag of carcasses. After rodents are declared deceased (done using a toe-pinch test) and they’ve had relevant bodily parts removed (a lot of experiments require post-mortem samples and data), they go into a bin bag that goes into a freezer before being incinerated later.
“You might take the spleen out, sometimes you take the brain out, but all of that feels very procedural. You’re using your muscle memory. When you have the carcasses, that’s when it hits home,” they said.
Post-mortem on relationship with rodents
The life and times of a rodent might be short-lived, but it leaves a mark on the scientists experimenting on them, caring for them, and sending them to the morgue.
Nasir says they gave meaning and purpose to her research. Rather than simply data on slides, the rodents were a reminder that these parts and methods come from somewhere, “from something”.
It’s why she would always give a rat a departing thanks before putting it down: “I would say, ‘Thank you, ladies, for the work you’ve done. Thank you for your contribution to women’s health. You’ve done more than I could ever do’.”
The nameless rats were also given formal acknowledgment in Nasir’s thesis.
Why no names? Because they all look and act the same. Plus, she said it’s a disastrous recipe for attachment.
The effect on the researchers who use laboratory animals is interesting. Mid-20th century animal behaviourist Konrad Lorenz reported being distressed after feeding baby rats to a snake. He overcame the problem by switching to adult animals, claiming that it was the baby-ness that triggered his reaction. Present-day researchers seem to have taken a step forward in recognising that all the animals that they deal with deserve consideration. It doesn’t look like we can eliminate the use of laboratory animals any time soon, but it is important to treat them with respect and humanity. I was distressed at the number of mice used in my 1970s biology uni course supposedly to teach us the basics of lab work, but it seemed to me they were being used and discarded casually for little benefit. They were literally single-use resources because of the need for ‘naive’ subjects, with no previous experience to affect their behaviour.
In my view, the same should apply to laboratory animals and farm livestock: make their lives as stress-free as possible, treat them with respect and don’t waste their contribution.
And look for ways to eliminate the need to use animals in experiments.
My former partner worked in research, mainly using mice. Some of the procedures done to the animals were grim and repetitive. There’s a point where having to do something to an animal time after time, knowing that the beast hates it, knowing that it’s painful and frightening, takes away part of your humanity. She quit eventually, but says that on a karmic level she’ll be paying a price if the Buddhists are right about reincarnation.
When I was in first year, psych students were each given a rat to send crazy. You’d teach to do or not do something with better food and electric shocks and once it was trained, you had to reverse the stimuli, and then reverse it again until the rat went mad and gave up trying to guess what you wanted from it. Big classes, lots of rats. I think now the students all watch a film of it being done to one rat.
I have always had an abiding love for science. However, after I completed a BSc.(Hons) Degree in 1981 with a major in biochemistry I decided that this sort of work was not for me. I remember one third-year practical class where it was necessary to kill a rat by banging its head against a bench. The instructor asked for a volunteer to do this. I knew that doing this sort of thing was definitely not ‘my cup-of-tea’. It was explained that the rat could not be euthanized using a needle because we needed to analyze some of the animal’s organs and that the chemicals used in the needle to kill the rat would quite possibly interfere with this analysis.
As a secondary teacher, I also recall feeling decidedly uncomfortable taking a year 7 science class in which mice were used for some study (I can’t recall the exact details of the project). My laboratory technician used to euthanase them with carbon dioxide after the topic was completed if the mice could not be given away to the students.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I do not like animals being used in a research or educational setting when harm is done to these creatures even if it is all in the name of ‘educational advancement’ or ‘medical research’, for human benefit. There have been myriad instances where animals have been subjected to an unconscionable level of cruelty in laboratories. To me, this is totally unacceptable.
I still remain friends with an old classmate from my university days who conducts world-leading research in America (he was the smart one). He has in the past, and still is, using ‘pig models’ for his work. I do not like this and we tend not to discuss this aspect of his work. I am a member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). I mentioned my support for this organization to him a couple of years ago. He became quite agitated and called them a “terrorist organization”. For the sake of the friendship, I let that comment go unremarked upon.
Then, of course, the inevitable question arises, what about the use of an animal that is a national pest such as Bufo marinus (the cane toad) or Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly which has been a favorite of geneticists for many decades)? It is here that I have to relent and waive my objections. I know that I will be accused of showing ‘double standards’ and of having an inconsistent approach and I know that there is something to that criticism but this is a conundrum that I have yet to resolve for myself.
Why was it necessary to kill a rat by banging its head against a bench?
I presume that the instructor felt that this would be a very quick way to ‘sacrifice’ (to use a commonly used euphemism for ‘killing’) the animal.
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that an insect is in a different order of sentience from a mammal, and adjusting ethical considerations accordingly. But to me, treating a rat in this way is no more categorically defensible than doing the same to a cat, dog or monkey (I’m happy to put the great apes to one side here). Whatever differences in intelligence or perception we’re talking about aren’t going to vary that much between rodentia and carnivora.
Who is Wardah Nasir?
It may have been informative to hear other points of view, such as lab managers from large scientific institutions, of which there are many in Australia. I didn’t understand how “Confidentiality protocols in their institution” limited comments from the unnamed scientist, since that scientist was commenting anonymously.
If rodent use were banned in scientific institutions, what would be the cost? For example, what therapies might not have been developed over the last 20 years?
You could make the same claim about research on humans. What therapies haven’t been developed because we haven’t experimented on human beings that have given consent.
Is there any danger that we might ever consider questions about animal welfare independently? There’s no question that medical research benefits from torturing animals in laboratories; but if we’re going to defend that on a utilitarian basis, then we need to be clear-eyed about what precisely that entails. The old saying about abattoirs and glass walls may apply here…
I don’t know of any case that could be made for inflicting pain on animals independent of the benefits that humans derive from such activities.
And I’m not one to make the case that the former is justified by the latter. If I were in charge, we’d go without medicines derived from animal cruelty.
Since I’m not in charge, and more powerful humans are doing what they do, that’s the world I live in. All I can do is seek to understand it better, and give my thanks to those who gave their lives.
Without knowing who has sacrified and for what, I’m ignorant. If I at least knew what therapies came from what sacrifices, I’d be more aware of the debt I owe.
I never give money to cancer research, etc. When my dog got diabetes I took the trouble to treat her with insulin injections partly because it was a treatment discovered by experiments on dogs, so dogs dying for other dogs’ benefit is, to me, better than dogs dying for human benefit. The problem with animal experiments is that there is no end to it and it becomes self perpetuating. I don’t know if LD50 is still an industry standard. It was always completely useless information, as is most of the data still collected. Shampoo, anyone?
Where we have interfered with an ecology to create a harmfull imbalance it may be necessary to cull numbers – for example horses in the high country, camels in the desert or rabbits anywhere. Plus cane toads, cats, foxes and pigs, feral. Intestinal worms, and the little creatures that cause malaria and TB. The vectors of disease too, like mozzies and ticks. Kill the lot any way you can, but with care not to create further problems, most of which will be unforseeable by mere humans. After all, these are issues we have created ourselves.
We need to face the reality that we have a need to kill things.