Introduction
Animal experimentation is an issue that raises
controversy whenever it is discussed. It has been the center of
controversy for decades. Animal rights activists have held hundreds of
protests on this issue. The pro-experimentation lobby opposes any new
regulation of the field.
However, one of the most controversial issues about
animal experimentation is the direction in which it is going. No one
seems to know if animal experimentation is increasing or decreasing. Are
more animals being experimented on today than five years ago, or are
fewer animals imprisoned in laboratories? Definitive answers to these
questions are difficult to obtain. Accuracy is difficult because
reporting requirements do not currently cover many of the most commonly
used species. Therefore, we are left with a very incomplete picture.
Reports issued by the USDA/APHIS (the government
agency charged with enforcing the Animal Welfare Act) on an annual basis
are difficult to assess. While they seem to indicate trends, these
trends are often fraught with uncertainty. The exclusion of commonly
used species (rats, mice, birds, etc.) from the regulatory process is
one concern. Additionally, there seems to be a constant problem with
reporting. Many labs simply seem not to file the necessary forms in time
for their statistics to be included in this report. In the six-year
period between 1996 and 2001 there was not a single year when all
facilities reported. With significant amounts of experimentation
centered in certain large labs, non-reporting by even a few labs can
substantially skew national totals. Additionally, major reporting
inconsistencies have recently been uncovered regarding both the
compilation process used by the USDA and the accuracy of the reports
filed by major facilities. Therefore, it is highly likely that the USDA
statistics often utilized as a basis for examinations of animal
experimentation trends may be flawed beyond repair.
Where does that leave us? Unfortunately, nowhere. No
other reports provide data which give a picture that is any better.
Therefore we have undertaken a different method of assessing the
direction of animal experimentation.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to assess every
aspect of animal experimentation. Private labs are often not
particularly forthcoming with information, and government agencies can
take months to turn over documents.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be used
as the basis for this assessment because the NIH is the largest single
funding agency for animal experimentation in the U.S. The CRISP
(Computer Retrieved Information on Scientific Projects) database
catalogues every project that the NIH (and some other parts of the
Department of Health and Human Services) funds via a grant, whether it
involves animals or clinical research. Evaluation of this database
should give us a good indication of animal experimentation within the
NIH and, by generalization, throughout the rest of the government. This
can then potentially be generalized to represent animal experimentation
as a whole. However, the CRISP system deals only with NIH grants. NIH
research contracts are not part of this system. However, it is believed
that trends in the contract system would closely resemble trends in the
grant system.
