My kid, who also attended, said, "I'm doing my experiment on plants."
Elementary school science fair! If you want to condition your own dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, you need to fill out additional paperwork and get your vet to approve. I can only imagine what load of crap university scientists have to wade through to get any research done.
We don't need more gatekeepers dictating morality to us.
The abuses demand oversight, it is true. But that oversight does not require professional qualifications. Something that shocks the conscience of a Nobel laureate will likely also shock the conscience of high-school dropouts. The very same peer jury system that is capable of condemning a criminal human to state execution or awarding millions of dollars in civil restitution can certainly determine whether a method of sacrificing research animals to science is acceptable or not.
The same public concerns that led to the retrofit of commercial slaughterhouses with more humane Grandin animal handling systems can be applied to research animals. My suggestion is this: for any given experiment that involves potential harm or injury to animals, assemble a randomized, unbiased, volunteer jury of at least 12 people. Explain to them the goals of the experiment and the protocols, and the proposed animal involvement. If no more than 25% of the jury objects, the experiment may begin immediately. Otherwise, rewrite the protocols and try again. Ethics approval could take days instead of months.
If you entertain the possibility that an animal can suffer as much as a human being, then all the regulation in the world is not enough. Consider even the most humane animal experiment, replace the animal with a human being, and see how you feel about it. Animals are living beings that we share the planet with; let them live their lives out in their natural environment. Animal experimentation should not even be contemplated, for exactly the same reason that wartime Nazi medical and eugenic experiments are condemned: for causing needless suffering in other living beings.
Regulation must strike a compromise between allowing research to continue with enough oversight to limit abuse. It is the sort of compromise developers use with security; enough to limit abuse, but not too much that no-one can use the system!
NO IACUC at any university or any veterinarian would approve this.
> Years ago some Researcher put a plywood cover on his truck. He then filled the truck with live piglets. He then went four wheel driving. He claimed to be studying orthopedic injuries.
If not illegal then, this would certainly be illegal now.
> She even admitted a lot of it was validating Current studies--so students could finish their studies in order to get that advance degree.
How is validation useless?
> So, there are no regulations in the United States on the treatment rodents and amphibians in schools and labs.
If anything there is TOO MUCH regulation. There are so many hoops you have to jump through before you're allowed to do animal experiments that it's almost ridiculous at this point in several institutions. I was on a team which proposed an experiment in which we wanted to monitor the uptake of trace quantities of known compounds and their derivatives in hair. The doses would have been far below anything toxic and the only procedures were injection of the compound and shaving the rodents while they were under anesthetic. This experiment took WELL OVER A YEAR to make it through multiple animal welfare committees and for investigators to get the required training; so long that we ended up dropping the proposal all together.
Please also keep in mind that most experiments are being done on mice, animals which people have no problem killing and attacking in their homes using brutal techniques (sticky traps, terrible poisons, spring loaded traps) or feeding to their caged pets while still alive with no moral qualms whatsoever.