Prior to the use of any animal, all of our proposed procedures are reviewed by a committee of scientists, veterinarians, animal care technicians and members of the local community to ensure that they conform with all institutional, local, state and federal animal welfare laws, regulations and policies. This committee has the power to ask us to modify our procedures or to halt our work if there are unresolved problems. After our use of animals has been approved, our proposed experiments are reviewed for scientific merit by a national committee of experts in this field, in competition with proposals from other investigators. For the past 15 years, our experiments have been judged to be excellent and have received funding from various agencies, including the National Institutes of Health. Our experiments are performed on fully anesthetized animals so that experiments do not cause pain or distress.
Veterinary staff examine our animals daily to monitor their health and welfare.
Staff have the authority to remove from experimental use any unhealthy animal. The animal care facility in which our animals are housed is fully accredited and subject to inspection by the accrediting agency. All our technical staff and research trainees have received formal instruction in our approved techniques. In some of our experiments we use rats that we either breed ourselves or obtain from licensed commercial suppliers. We use rats because of their short gestation period, the relatively immature state of their brain at birth and the rapid rate at which they mature after birth.