Craig Berridge, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is comfortable with the scrutiny given animal research on campus.

Animal research is a heavily regulated and overseen process, says Berridge, who studies the brain mechanisms of rats. And I think everyone who does animal research feels theyre balancing the need for and desire to alleviate human suffering and to minimize animal suffering.

Berridge is the chairman of the College of Letters and Science committee that oversees animal research. There are five such bodies, known as Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees, or IACUCs. Experiments are also vetted by funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health.

These committees were mandated by a1985 amendment to thefederal Animal Welfare Act in the wake ofrevelations about the scandalously grisly laboratory conditions of a colony of rhesus monkeys in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Its a committee with a very explicitly identified purpose, Berridge says. Its a committee that satisfies federal rules, federal laws, and those laws prescribe what were supposed to do.

But others are skeptical that the animal researchers who dominate the IACUCs are capable of rigorously evaluating the ethics of the work on which their livelihoods and careers are built.

These are technocrats, says Rick Marolt, a local critic of animal experimentation. They live in a culture of animal experimentation.

The committees are primarily composed of animal researchers, although they are required to include at least one public member. They have the ability to reject studies or require changes. Usually, committees approve experimental protocols unanimously after requesting revisions.

Since 2004, around 12,000 protocol submissions have been made to the UWs five campus IACUCs, a somewhat duplicative number since many were submitted multiple times, says Eric Sandgren, director of the Research Animal Resources Center. Eighteen of those protocols drew dissenting votes, nine were denied outright, and an unknown number of protocols were simply withdrawn, he says.

Sandgrennotes that the committees almost always ask for protocol revisions. I do not believe it is a criticism of our system that IACUCs are willing to work with investigators until a protocol finally receives approval.

Read more:
UW animal research oversight committees strive for consensus