Treat Your Lab Rats Right

The National Institutes of Health recently revised their official Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals for the first time in 16 years. This is the guide used by all laboratories who receive funding from the government to conduct their research and all labs receiving this funding must comply with the procedures described in the guide. The revised edition, however, is causing an uproar among facilities, however, because of a little change made on page 57.

The change involves the amount of space that must be allotted to a female lab mouse or rat and her babies. The revised guidelines suggest that a female be allotted for herself and her babies, a cage the size of a shoebox. Nothing extraordinary sounding, until one considers that previous guidelines allowed for two females, their litters and a male mouse or rat to occupy the same amount of space. Animal rights advocates applaud the change, feeling that this increase in allotted space not only allows for more humane conditions and natural development of the lab rat and her offspring, but also is a boon to scientific study, as increased space could mean a less stressful environment, translating to more accurate research results.

Some laboratories, however, are up in arms about the change. Consider Johns Hopkins research institute. They do a lot of research, they have a lot of rats. They have so many rats that research facilities consisting of huge warehouses containing 10,000 cages of rats are not uncommon. That's a lot of rats... and a lot of cages... and a lot of space. The concern for laboratories and research facilities like Johns Hopkins is a logistical one. More space for mama rats means room for fewer cages. In short, it'll cost the labs more money to house the same number of rats that they house now. They aren't happy about that.

In response to the apparent outrage at the changes, the writers of the guide have insisted that the new guidelines are not mandatory and that facilities needn't follow the new suggestions to maintain their government funding. What they aimed to do with the change, one writer has said, is to set a benchmark, a standard from which to work from. This placated some of those concerned about the change, but essentially rained upon the parade of those animal rights advocates who had applauded the measure. They claim that making the guidelines optional allows for abuse.

Sometimes you just can't make anyone happy.