Moral Problem of Animal Experiment: Looking into the case of Mice and Rat in LD50 test

Moral Problem of Animal Experiment:

Looking into the case of Mice and Rat in LD50 test.

We human use animal; we eat them; play with them; wear their skin, and most importantly, we use them as the subject of experiments in advancing medical science by discovering new drugs or other therapies; so as to promote human health and hence benefit human beings.

Among all laboratory animals, mice and rat are the major animals being used in laboratory tests. Over 80% [1]of the laboratory animals are rat and mice, and they are not protected by any policy, as rat and mice are not classified as ‘animals’ under the Animal Welfare Act; their rights and welfare have been neglected. In this essay, it is hoped to have a deeper look into the animal experiments, focusing on the case of rat and mice. In the following, the statistics showing the use of rat and mice would be first introduced, followed by the rights of mice and rat, and the current condition of the mice and rat in LD50 experiments as well as the moral problem behind it, finalized by the possible suggestion to the improvement of animal experiments in the future.

Statistics of laboratory animals

Among the entire laboratory animals, rats and mice are the first most used group of animals. It is currently estimated that the total number of laboratory animals now used throughout the world annually is 200 to 225 million,[2] while the United States accounts for about 100 million of these; it includes 50 million mice, 20 million rats, about 30 millions other animals, rat and mice experiments took in a total of 70 millions. According to the recent statistical report, ‘Seventh Report on the Statistics on the Number of Animals used for Experimental and other Scientific Purposes in the Member States of the European Union’ (2013), more than 80% of the testing animals are rodents between the year of 1996 to 2011, which includes mice and rats.

The numbers of used global laboratory animals are expected to be larger than the statistical reports by the European Union, as there is lack of data report of other countries, for example China. Hence it is noted that there is no accurate estimation of global laboratory animals. The use of rats and mice are expected to be larger than 50 millions in a year.

Rights of Rat and mice

The Animal Welfare Act has been established to protect animal’s rights and prevent cruelty to animals. It ensures that laboratory animals are provided with humane care and treatment both during transportation and scientific experiments. However, this policy only protects most of the animals, but not all the animals.

The Animal Welfare Act is protecting most animals, but a few are being excluded. Here is the definition of ‘animal’ in the Animal Welfare Act[3]:

‘The term ‘animal’ means any live or dead dog, cat, monkey, guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or such other warm-blooded animal, as the Secretary may determine is being used, or is intended for use, for research, testing, experimentation, or exhibition purposes, or as a pet; but such term excludes birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus, bred for use in research…’

In order words, rat and mice are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act. Even rights of a dead dog are regard as more important than living rat or mice. Due to the exclusion from the Animal Welfare Act, there are no guarantee pain relief or veterinary care to rat and mice in laboratory test. Apart from the lack of protection in animal testing, this also encourages more scientists to use rat and mice in conducting scientific experiments or researches. It is the reason why rat and mice have taken more than 80% of the laboratory animals since 1996.

Rat and mice experiment: investigating the case of LD50 test

There are various kinds of animal experiments, and have been categorized into six groups[4] according to Rollin, Bernard, E (1992). The six groups include ‘basic biological research’ and ‘applied basic biomedical research’, which refers to formulating and testing of hypotheses about fundamental theoretical question and diseases respectively. The third group is ‘development of drugs and therapeutic chemicals and biological’, which relates to discovery on specific substances for specific purposes. ‘Testing of various consumer goods and safety’ and ‘the use of animals in educational institutions for demonstration’ are the last two groups.

With the increase of goods and products as well as substances in food, the fourth group of test, ‘Testing of various consumer goods and safety’, have also faced increasing demands. According to regulations promulgated by the Food and Drug Administration, each new chemical or biological substance marketed for consumer use, such as drug, substance in food, pesticides, household product, must be subjected to safety evolution. Hence, the increase of products leads to more safety test, especially cosmetic products, household products, which various tests have been revised to determine the irritating to skin and eyes. Toxicity tests, like the LD50 test, are being used to test the products and make sure the safety of products.

In LD50 test, ‘LD’ stands for ‘lethal dose’ while ‘50’ refers to ’50 percent’. The LD50 test seeks to establish at what level of test substance will prove ‘lethal’, in order words, will kill, 50 percent of the test animals.

During the LD50 test, force-feeding and observation is required. A measurable amount of test substance is passed through a tube and down the animal’s throat, and their condition will be observed. The observation may last up to two weeks. During the observation, the requisite 50 percent normally die. After the remaining animals are killed, their dissected bodies will be examined and analyzed. However, it is noted that even products are proven to be highly toxic for test animals; the products will still be put on the market, with a label of ‘Harmful or fatal if swallowed’. LD50 test is the invisible history behind the ‘Harmful or fatal if swallowed’ labels on the cans of such items as household products, cosmetic product sand industrial solvent.

The LD50 test is causing unnecessary pain to the laboratory animals. Animals frequently feel sick before the test substance kills them. Their symptom may include diarrhea, convulsion and bloody discharge from the mouth, eyes, and rectum[5]. Richard Ryder, an experimental psychologist who used animals in his research, characterizes the plight of animals used in LD50 tests of cosmetics as follows:[6]

‘Because most cosmetic products are not especially poisonous, it necessarily follows that if a rat or a dog has to be killed this way, then very great quantities of cosmetics must be forced into their stomachs, blocking or breaking internal organs, or killing the animals by some other physical action, rather than by any specific chemical effect… the procedure of force-feeding- even with healthy food- is itself a notoriously unpleasant procedure, as suffragettes and other prisoners is not food at all, but large quantities of face power, makeup or liquid hair dye, then no doubt the suffering is very much greater indeed.’

The environmental conditions of the experiment also cause psychological and behavioral influence to the test animals, which may affect and thus lead to unreliable testing result. Laboratory animals are sometime isolated when undergoing certain procedures, in order to minimize the potential cross-infection. Areas, or cage, in which animals are housed, usually lack windows, therefore there is no natural light and fresh air. Besides, animal laboratory is a noisy place, with noise level often reaching 90 to 100 dB during working hours.

With the noisy, confined environment without fresh air and natural light, it can easily cause bad influence on the laboratory animals psychologically and behaviorally. The laboratory routine procedure may also increase the fear and stress of the test animals. Animals may engage in excessive grooming, aggression, and stereotypical behaviors such as repeated jumping or bar biting[7]. These changes may lead to increase in blood pressure and heart rate, and thus affect the testing result.

Hence it is noted that the LD50 test is causing great pain and lead to death to the test animals during the testing procedures; the environment of the experiments also cause fears and stress to test animals, which lead to psychological and behavioral changes.

While most of the animals are protected by the Animal Welfare Act policy, rat and mice do not have that protection. Pain relief and veterinary care are not necessarily provided to them. Even rat and mice are the largest group of animals that are being use in experiments, but there is no law to protect them, to make sure their living condition in laboratory achieve certain standard, or even to ease their pain before death. In LD50 test, they are in pain till dead. Their life has been filled with fear and stress caused by the living environment as well as testing procedures.

Furthermore, if the products are still present to the market even the result shows that they are highly toxic; the purpose of ‘testing’ the products is doubted. And here raise a question, is it fair for human to use, or sacrifice, animals in order to safeguard human life?

Moral problem

In the debate of whether it is morally correct to use animals in scientific research, most supporter of animal experiment often stressed on the importance of animals to scientific development. They assert that most modern societies place a higher value on human life than on nonhuman animal life. The goal of improving and protecting health of human shall be overweigh those animals. They also emphasize that the suffering of animals are minimized in tests, so as to ease pain in a certain extent.

However, when we look into the case of LD50 test, it is doubted that whether those tests can ‘improve and protect’ health of human. As mentioned that the LD50 test is carried out to know the level of toxicity and the harm of particular products to human, this kind of toxic test is a must under the current consumer policy what wish to protect people’s health. However, the products which come out with the result of highly toxic, will be only labeled with a warning text and sell to people. If the death of at least 50 percent of testing animals only return with a label to warn consumers, the use of the toxic test shall be considered as unnecessary.

Moreover, the fear and stress caused by the laboratory environment may lead to inaccurate test result of LD50. From the above part, it is noted that the testing environment and procedure may cause psychological and behavioral effects, and hence affect the testing animals’ body condition as well as their behavior. Therefore this may lead to the unreliable test result.

Besides, it is agree that most animals are under the protection of the Animal Welfare Act, so that their suffering is minimized. Unfortunately, mice and rat are excluded from the list of ‘animals’. Hence the minimization of suffering that have given to other animals is not necessary apply to rat and mice.

Alternative strategies

The purpose of test of LD50 is doubted due to the unnecessary sacrifice of animal life and unreliable test results. Also with the lack of protection from law, rights and welfare of rat and mice have been neglected for more than few decades.

Animal supporters have urged to abolition of animal experiment. Tom Regan, an advocate of animals rights, have urged the ‘total abolition of use of animals in science’[8] as one of the goal of animal rights movement. It is supported that it can be an ultimate goal in protecting the animals. However, like Rollin (1992) mentioned, this goal cannot be currently seen as an easy goal to achieve[9]. As most of society is not prepared to ‘sacrifice the benefits that research brings’, especially in the area of disease control and treatment, it is unlikely to get support from the majority society to support the abolition of animal testing.

Alternative strategies in protecting rat and mice, as well as other laboratory animals would be suggested in the following.

Primarily, the Animal Welfare Act should cover all animals in all species. There is a famous phrase from the Animal Farm, ‘all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others’. All animals, including human, have the sense of pain, and certain needs to survive. However, the current animal protection law, Animal Welfare Act, only protect majority of animals, but turn a blind eye on rat, mice and bird. If all the animals are supposed to be equal, it is unfair for the law to make ‘some of the animals’ to be ‘more equal’ than ‘other’, and chose not to protect certain kind of animals. This policy encourage scientists to use rat and mice in doing experiments while there is no necessary to provide any pain relief or help to those animals, which is one of the reasons that large number of rat and mice are being used as laboratory animals. In order to protect rat and mice, as well as other animals that are currently not covered by the animal policy, a full coverage of protection shall be upheld in the Animal Welfare Act.

Besides, all the researchers that require carrying out animal experiments ought to be licensed, so as to prevent illegal experiments and reduce the number of animal experiments. The Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Associations has identified four categories of professionals who should be receive education and training (Nevalainen et al,1999)[10], include those who are taking care of animals, carrying out animal experiments, responsible for directing animal experiments, as well as laboratory animal science specialists. In the Netherlands, only scientists with an academic degree on one of the biomedical disciplines who have completed a three weeks course in lab animal science are permitted to conduct animals testing. However, this approach of permitting researchers to do animal experiments after receiving appropriate training and education is not adopted internationally. In order to reduce the number of laboratory animals as well as prevent illegal testing, all researchers or scientists in the globe shall be restricted to be educated and licensed before they can do animal experiments legally.

Moreover, the nature and interest of the laboratory animals shall be respected. Like Rellin (1992) suggested, it is necessary to ‘maximize the animals potential for living its life according to its nature or and certain fundamental rights should be preserved as far as possible’ [11]; certain aspects of the animals’ s nature are need to be sacred and protected, and he also suggest that researchers shall avoid encroaching on the animals’ fundamental interests and nature. This means animals shall have ‘right to freedom from pain, to be housed and fed in accordance with its nature, exercise, to company if it is a social being’. The purpose of upholding the protection of animals’ nature and interests is not just a moral responsibility as suggested by Rellin(1992), but also a way to avoid unreliable experiment result.

Conclusion

Rat and mice have been the first mostly used laboratory animals over decades. Despite of being more than 80% of the test animals, they are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act; pain relief and veterinary care are not provide to them.

A toxic test LD50 that is used to test the toxicity and safeness of products has been investigated on the above. However, the necessity of this kind of test is truly doubtful. It is noted that 50 percent of the test animals are sacrifice for scientific use and testing, but the animals’ death only prove that the tested products need to put on a ‘Harmful or fatal if swallowed’ label. Besides, the environment and procedure of testing are considered as inhumane, which cause unnecessary suffering to the test animals. The laboratory animals, which are affected by the testing condition, may also lead to unreliable test result.

Although the animal experiments can not be banned in a short period of time, it is suggested that Animal Welfare Act shall cover all animals in all species, and all the researchers in the globe that wish to carry out animal experiments ought to be licensed, also, the nature and interest of the laboratory animals shall be respected. Therefore, the rights of rat and mice shall be improved.

Reference:

Cohen, C., & Regan, T. (2001). The animal rights debate. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Knight, A. (2011). Impacts on Laboratory Animals. In The costs and benefits of animal experiments (pp. 30-32). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Nevalainen, T., Berge, E., Gallix, P., Jilge, B., Melloni, E., Thomann, P., ... Zutphen, L. (1999). FELASA guidelines for education of specialists in laboratory animal science (Category D): Report of the Federation of Laboratory Animal Science Associations Working Group on Education of Specialists (Category D) accepted by the FELASA Board of Management. Laboratory Animals, 1-15.

Rollin, B. (1981). Animal rights and human morality. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Rollin, B. (1981). The Use and Abuse of Animals in Research. In Animal rights and human morality (pp. 136-137). Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Regan, T. (1983). The case for animal rights (2nd rev. ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Regan, T. (2001). Defending animal rights. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Regamey, R. (1967). International Symposium on laboratory animals: Royal Society of Medicine London, 22.- 24.3. 1966. Basel : Karger.

Ryder, R. (1975). Victims of science: The use of animals in research (p. 36). London: Davis-Poynter.

Scientific Purposes in the Member States of the European Union. (2013, January 1). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52013DC0859&from=EN

Seventh Report on the Statistics on the Number of Animals used for Experimental and other Scientific Purposes in the Member States of the European Union. (2013, January 1). Retrieved December 6, 2014.

CHAPTER 54—TRANSPORTATION, SALE, AND HANDLING OF CERTAIN ANIMALS. (2013, January 1). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2013-title7/html/USCODE-2013-title7-chap54.htm

[1] Scientific Purposes in the Member States of the European Union. (2013, January 1). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52013DC0859&from=EN

Seventh Report on the Statistics on the Number of Animals used for Experimental and other Scientific Purposes in the Member States of the European Union. (2013, January 1). Retrieved December 6, 2014.

[2] Rollin, B. (1981). The Use and Abuse of Animals in Research. In Animal rights and human morality (pp. 136-137). Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

[3] CHAPTER 54—TRANSPORTATION, SALE, AND HANDLING OF CERTAIN ANIMALS. (2013, January 1). Retrieved December 6, 2014, from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2013-title7/html/USCODE-2013-title7-chap54.htm

[4] Rollin, B. (1981). The Use and Abuse of Animals in Research. In Animal rights and human morality (pp. 136-137). Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

[5] Regamey, R. (1967). International Symposium on laboratory animals: Royal Society of Medicine London, 22.- 24.3. 1966. Basel : Karger.

[6] Ryder, R. (1975). Victims of science: The use of animals in research (p. 36). London: Davis-Poynter.

[7] Knight, A. (2011). Impacts on Laboratory Animals. In The costs and benefits of animal experiments (pp. 30-32). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[8] Cohen, C., & Regan, T. (2001). The animal rights debate. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws/animal-welfare-act

[9] Rollin, B. (1981). The Use and Abuse of Animals in Research. In Animal rights and human morality Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

[10] Nevalainen, T., Berge, E., Gallix, P., Jilge, B., Melloni, E., Thomann, P., ... Zutphen, L. (1999). FELASA guidelines for education of specialists in laboratory animal science (Category D): Report of the Federation of Laboratory Animal Science Associations Working Group on Education of Specialists (Category D) accepted by the FELASA Board of Management. Laboratory Animals, 1-15.

[11] Rollin, B. (1981). The Use and Abuse of Animals in Research. In Animal rights and human morality (pp. 140). Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

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