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At yesterday’s paper study, we covered a very recent Nature paper on the discovering of a new class of antibiotics which work against some very scary resistant microbes. It’s an exciting finding BUT we need to talk about the mouse studies they did. This may take some time. 
Here’s the link to the study itself which is currently pay-walled: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1791-1
Here’s the University’s press release about it: https://cos.northeastern.edu/news/a-new-antibiotic-has-been-hiding-in-the-gut-of-a-tiny-worm-it-may-be-our-best-weapon-against-drug-resistant-bacteria/
I would much rather be tweeting the very cool family of bacteria this new antibiotic comes from – called Photorhabdus. I’d even go so far as to say I owe my career to one member of the family, the amazing glowing Photorhabdus luminescens.
But instead I’m going to open an important can of worms.
The researchers report a LOT of work but I’m guessing in order to publish in Nature they had to show at least some preliminary evidence that their new compound works in animals.
They’ve chosen to use mice and their experiments have been approved by an institutional animal ethics review board and have been "performed up
to institutional animal care and use policies"
to institutional animal care and use policies"
But here’s the thing. In my opinion, the animal experiments they describe are absolutely crap. I don’t think they are well justified or humane. That institutional review boards in the USA allow experiments like these to be done is an utter disgrace.
And that such experiments can be reported in ‘elite’ journals like Nature is disgusting.
Let me first lay out why I believe I’m qualified to have these opinions. Some of my research involves the use of laboratory mice and I have a moral and legal obligation to do the best research I can in the most humane way.
I’ve advocated amongst my community that our animal studies should be as relevant as possible to address the questions we are trying to answer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16518420
For my approach and commitment, I won the first @NC3Rs prize back in 2005 and a similar prize in NZ in 2011. https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/3rsprizewinners#2005
I currently sit on the NZ board of the Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching (ANZCCART). We’ve been developing resources to show researchers how they can do research more humanely using fewer animals. https://anzccart.org.nz/anzccart-resources/
I have been a member of two institutional animal ethics committees, one in the UK and one in Aotearoa New Zealand.
I’m open with the public about what I do, why, and how, for example, https://sciblogs.co.nz/infectious-thoughts/2016/02/29/are-300-animals-a-day-really-tortured-for-scientific-research-in-new-zealand-part-ii/
Doing experiments on animals is a privilege that should not be taken for granted. There are plenty of people who vehemently disagree with us having this privilege. It’s not like animals can give informed consent.
In many countries, animal experimentation is restricted by law. I’ve worked in the UK and NZ where the law requires researchers to minimise the harm caused to the animals used in their experiments.
In practice this means providing pain relief wherever possible and defining humane end points at which animals should be humanely euthanised.
In other words, no animal should suffer any more than is absolutely necessary. It should be euthanised humanely and until that point should suffer as little as possible. Even better if it doesn’t have to suffer at all.
When mice are sick they tend to stop cleaning themselves and become less active. There fur starts to look all ruffled and loses its gloss. There are even differences in how their eyes, cheeks, and ears look.
These differences have been turned into the ‘Grimace’ scale which allows researchers to tell the subtle differences between a healthy animal and one that is starting to get sick https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/grimacescales
When mice are really sick they become what is called ‘moribund’ – they sit all hunched up and shaking. Then they die.
In my opinion there is very little justification for leaving an animal to die during an experiment. In fact, using the Grimace scale, animals can be euthanised long before they become so ill they are moribund and close to death.
To quote from the paper: “At 24 h post-infection, mice were euthanized via CO2 asphyxiation, unless already dead.”
In my opinion, that’s a fucking disgrace. And I haven’t even started on why these aren’t really the right experiments to be carrying out to find out if the antibiotic is likely to be any good.
So how do we fix this? I think researchers need to be educated about the difference between humane euthanasia and humane endpoints. They are not the same thing.
Ethics committees shouldn’t allow studies if the endpoints aren’t humane unless there is excellent justification.
If this research really was performed to "institutional animal care and use policies" then those policies need revising.
And no journal, but especially those like Nature that are held up as the pinnacle of excellent research, should publish terrible experiments where animals have suffered for no reason.
