f6098d8b__and_Use_of_Laboratory_Animals__Comments
[ID] 524 [Entry Date] 04/27/2011 at 11:00:48 AM [Affiliation] Self [Comments] 
Comment 1: The new guidelines should NOT be accepted. I am a psychopharmacologist and neurotoxicologist who has been working with the behavioral effects of drugs and toxic substances for 25 years. The new requirement that pharmaceutical grade drugs be used, even for rodents, will impose greater costs, less flexibility, and more paperwork. It will be all cost with no benefit. I have been preparing clean, but not sterile, drug solutions for rodents for over 25 years and have never had an infection due to drug administration. The costs of pharmaceutical grade drugs from vendors is exorbitant. Preparing them in house will require additional expense and time, which would be fine if it actually did some good but, with animals whose resistance to infection is high this is completely unnecessary. Comment 2: Second, I am concerned about the new rigid requirements for caloric restriction. My concerns are two fold. First, the paperwork requirements will impose additional burden on many investigators, especially those in small institutions. Their work is valuable and should not be discouraged. Second,however, is that food or caloric restriction should not be viewed as an exception but rather as the rule. As the new manual notes, rodents on ad lib diets become exceptionally obese, making them unhealthy and poor biomedical models. The guide should do all that it can to make control over caloric intake easy to do and should push for its becoming the norm.
Listing of Public Comments on Proposed Adoption and Implementation of the Eighth Edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals