f6098d8b__and_Use_of_Laboratory_Animals__Comments
[ID] 74 [Entry Date] 04/14/2011 at 06:03:22 PM [Affiliation] Self [Organization Name] University of Maryland School of Medicine [Organization City and State] Baltimore, MD [Comments] 
Comment 1: I am writing about the changes in the "Guide" regarding husbandry for mice. The requirement it proposes to provide more space per mouse, and per dam and her litter, would be very costly. At my institution, it would increase my costs for the mouse colonies I maintain by at least 25%. That is the equivalent of half a technician's salary, and would make it impossible for me to maintain my research program and research staff at its current size. Across all universities and research institutions in the country, this change alone would result in the loss of thousands of good research jobs and the significant shrinking of programs that use murine models of human diseases. This would in turn undermine the efforts of the NIH to promote translational research, slowing the development of new therapeutics. In a time of diminishing federal research dollars, this is just about the worst thing you could contemplate doing. I urge you to find an alternative (in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with our current approaches to animal husbandry for rats or mice), or at the very least to postpone implimentation of the new regulations until the federal research budget is growing again.
Listing of Public Comments on Proposed Adoption and Implementation of the Eighth Edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals