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1 Pain in Research Animals: General Principles and Considerations
Pages 11-32

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From page 11...
... The public expects animal experimentation to be not only scientifically justifiable and valid but also humane, meaning that it results in minimal or no pain, stress, distress, or other negative impact on the welfare of the animals involved. When laboratory animals are subjected to conditions that do cause pain or distress, then ethically -- at least from a utilitarian perspective -- the benefits must outweigh the costs.
From page 12...
... otherwise include the provision of adequate pain relief unless the pain is justified scientifically. Minimizing animal pain whenever possible is thus important both ethically and legally.
From page 13...
... . Pain typically involves a noxious stimulus or event that activates nociceptors in the body's tissues that convey signals to the central nervous system, where they are processed and generate multiple responses, including the "unpleasant sensory and emotional experience" central to the IASP definition.
From page 14...
... , many of these responses can also occur in organisms that do not experience pain (e.g., anesthetized animals, or those with spinal lesions that prevent nociceptive information from reaching higher central nervous system structures)
From page 15...
... Thus, efforts to alleviate pain in research animals typically focus on reducing its duration and/or intensity. Figure 1-1 helps illustrate how duration and intensity interact to affect aversiveness.
From page 16...
... cChronic pain in humans is usually defined as pain lasting beyond the expected course of normal healing, often arbitrarily set at 6 months or beyond. Such duration is not appropriate to apply to laboratory animals with much shorter lifespans than humans or early developmental stages.
From page 17...
... There is little information about the influence of such effects in other animals (but see Chapter 4) ; thus for most practical purposes, the alleviation of pain in research animals typically means reducing its duration and/or its intensity, and both are refinements to be made whenever possible (see Chapters 3, 4, and 5)
From page 18...
... . Such a report is the closest we have to a "gold standard." Second, in nonverbal organisms, be they laboratory animals or nonverbal humans such as babies, this type of self-report is not possible.
From page 19...
... . Other research reveals the instrumental learning of avoidance responses normally associated with pain with no possible involvement of the brain: spinally transected rats learn to keep their limbs withdrawn for longer periods of time if doing so will terminate the insult (Grau et al.
From page 20...
... The general acceptance that many animal species can experience pain underlies the emphasis on pain in guidelines and laws on humane care (see Appendix B) as well as the scientific validity of using animals to investigate clinical pain (see Appendix A)
From page 21...
... With a focus on vertebrates, this section presents a brief discussion of what constitutes good evidence of the capacity to experience pain. The discussion emphasizes the strength of the evidence that all mammals (includ
From page 22...
... . Other vertebrates -- birds, reptiles, fish, and amphibians -- have peripheral and spinal nociceptive circuitry akin to that of humans, but not the specific forebrain regions involved in human pain.
From page 23...
... . These findings suggest several useful indices for identifying animals that experience pain, not simply nociception (Box 1-4)
From page 24...
... . Examples of stimuli or tissue injury that cause pain in research animals, whether from disease conditions or experimental procedures, are given in Table 1-1.
From page 25...
... . 3 It is important to remember that early postnatal tissue injury can alter adult nociceptive processing, including enhanced responses to noxious stimuli.
From page 26...
... For example, USDA Policy #12 states that "a description of procedures or methods designed to assure that discomfort and pain to animals will be limited to that which is unavoidable in the conduct of scientifically valuable research" (USDA 1997b) , the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (DHHS 2002)
From page 27...
... While research on pain or on methods of alleviating pain may unavoidably cause animal distress and severe perturbation of animal welfare, the goal of researchers, veterinary teams, and IACUCs should be to reduce and alleviate pain in laboratory animals to the minimum necessary to achieve the scientific objective. REFERENCES Allen C
From page 28...
... 2006. Chronic pain and the emotional brain: Specific brain activity associated with spontaneous fluctuations of intensity of chronic back pain.
From page 29...
... 2002. Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
From page 30...
... Behav Brain Sci 23(2) :177-191; discussion 192-233.
From page 31...
... 2005. Pain management in horses and farm animals.


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