When looking through brochures and websites of various colleges and universities, photos of students and professors working with animals at research labs can dominate the pages. Many animal rights activists object to both students and professors working with animals. But, a few research-based institutions, which are accustomed to having animal-rights groups watch its every move, see this realm of academia as far from disheartening to animals. And, not only animal rights groups scrutinize their activity; the federal government has taken an active role in recent years, enacting regulation."We use animals to support out science-based medical research," Brandeis Professor Kenneth Hayes (BIOL) said. He said animal research helps scientists find out how certain diseases arise in humans.

But, Dr. Carl Kirker-Head, Surgical Veterinarian at Tufts University, said before anyone is allowed to even touch an animal, he or she has to make sure he or she is abiding by the number of federal regulations for animal research. He said these regulations achieve welfare for animals to undergo research.
Kirker-Head also said these regulations ensure that Tufts will not do anything to animals that inflicts pain on them. "It's a difficult thing to balance optimal animal welfare with the human health we want to achieve," he said.

Harvard University also abides by the national standards for animal research. "We have adopted the national standards and we are inspected by three different groups to make sure we are abiding by those standards." Harvard University's associate dean for public affairs, Don Gibbons said. The three groups he referred to are the National Institute of Health (NIH), United States Department of Agriculture and the State Department of Health.

The Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for overseeing the protection of research animals under the Animal Welfare Act, has stepped up enforcement, increasing its inspection force by a third since 2000. The Agriculture Department is the chief watchdog for the 36-year-old Animal Welfare Act, the prime federal law governing the treatment of laboratory animals. Most of those who did not abide by the Animal Welfare Act have been pet breeders or circuses.

The latest measures the Agriculture Department has taken included criticizing the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California San Francisco in the past year for deficiencies in their programs. Although neither university has been fined, last January, the University of Connecticut paid $129,000 in fines to the department, becoming the first academic institution to acknowledge several violations of the act.
In addition, the NIH is showing more interest in ensuring the humane treatment of labatory animals. Only recently has the National Institute of Health stepped up in more federal regulation because previously, it has been long maligned by animal-protection groups for its inactivity. Although the NIH also has regulations governing the care of animals, it does not conduct unannounced visits, and the agency is not empowered to take legal action against institutions. It can suspend funds, but it has rarely done so.

One group sued the NIH for failing to disclose information about veterinary research it financed at Ohio State University. The scientist whose work was being questioned then left the university, abandoning his grant. He was frustrated by the scrutiny and the protests.

Although these universities have all yielded to the national rules of animal welfare, its research differs in what scientists choose to further investigate.
Hayes said that mice helps researchers better understand human cancer. He also said that using mice also allows Brandeis to have a closer connection to the biological community. "We try and support the biological community as best we can."

He said that Brandeis has developed a mouse-model of leukemia, and that through research, he has found genes that cause leukemia in mice. He said that scientists that test on mice try to figure out what genes cause leukemia. "It's very fascinating how biological systems are alike," he said.

Brandeis strives to make connections with the biological community, Hayes said, and students and professors use different animals. For example,the Volen Center uses systems of zebra-fish to produce thousands of eggs. Also, he said, zebra-fish are used to study neurobiology in a general sense by looking at the genetics of their retina.

"We are very keen in trying to advance the disciplines associated with medicine and the biological sciences," Hayes said.
Tufts focuses on animal research to promote animal welfare and improve human/animal relationships. "We have a very large number of experts on a small campus who can help us help animals by directing their expertise," Kirker-Head said.

For example, Kirker-Head said that after researching animals to learn more about their relationships with humans, he concurred that pets help humans help each other. "Having a pet can help improve the psychological well-being of humans," he said.

Kirker-Head also said the human/animal relationship is necessary to understand how diseases arise in humans. "There remain a large number of human ailments for which we still have to revert back to animals in seeking a better standard of a disease," he said.

Although most researchers deem their findings ground-breaking and essential to their advancements in their fields, they said no one has ever objected to any of his or her research experiments or findings.
"Internally, people have never objected to(scientists') research on animals," Gibbons said. Gibbons, however, said that the only slight means to an objection came when students at Harvard wanted professors to decrease the use of animals in teaching physiology.

Hayes said that Congress has records of every experiment done in the labs at Brandeis. These files go through the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), The IACUC is a committee that regulates animal care and use and is federally regulated. "Any exposure they (the animals) might have to pain . we must look at very critically," he said.

He also said that Brandeis labs take other measures to ensure the safety and comfort of animals: all animals are easily identifiable and the government regulates animal-care. He said that people who work in the Brandeis research labs make sure there are not too many animals cramped into one cage, and that the quality of air they are breathing is acceptable, and that their food and water are fresh and that they are fed an abundant amount.

Whether there are rejections to this research, researchers say they feel it is beneficial. "We do undertake animal research, but we feel the benefit provided to society (both humans and animals) makes the endeavor worthwhile," Kirker-Head said.

"I think it's (animal research) absolutely essential for human breakthroughs," Gibbons said.