©The HSUS
Martin Stephens

by Nancy Lawson

As the vice president of Animal Research Issues for The Humane Society of the United States, Martin Stephens, Ph.D., is a scientist working to change the nature of scientific inquiry.

A trained biologist, he believes that sophisticated alternatives to animal research will not only benefit animals but also improve research outcomes.

Whether he is promoting student choice in dissection, advocating for an end to the use of randomly sourced dogs and cats in laboratories, or contributing to a report outlining a future without the use of animals in toxicity testing, Stephens collaborates with progressive members of the scientific community on everything from legislation to alternative methods development.

In this interview, he explains why.

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Q: What progress have you seen in the area of animal research during your 23 years at The HSUS?

A: Progress is hard to measure in this field, but let me mention a few examples.

The "Three Rs" approach of replacing, reducing, and refining animal use—which The HSUS has championed—has gained substantial traction in the United States. The Animal Welfare Act was strengthened, putting more emphasis on—among other things—the animals' psychological well-being, not just whether they have food and water.

The number of animals used in U.S. research has declined over this period, according to analyses of the available data. And, several objectionable practices have declined, including the use of chimpanzees, the use of pet dogs and cats rounded up by USDA-licensed agents known as "Class B" dealers, and compulsory dissection in biology classes.

Q: Why do we promote the Three Rs in favor of total abolition?

A: Certainly there are animal protection organizations that adopt an all-or-nothing approach, but historically the scientific community has just kept those folks at bay and said, "Well, they want to shut us down, so there's no sense in giving them a voice at the table." If you adopt a more pragmatic approach, as we have, it's less easily dismissed. And we are simply following an approach that scientists themselves have developed. We didn't generate the Three Rs; it was proposed by scientists in England in the '50s. But more than any other group, The HSUS has given it traction in the United States. And now it's become the operating principle governing animal welfare and science.

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Mice, rats, and other rodents constitute so many of the animals in labs, but their suffering can be difficult to detect.

Q: How has The HSUS managed to gain that kind of credibility among scientists?

A: We typically follow the approach of Henry Spira, an activist in the '80s and the '90s: if we see a problem, we'll approach the university or the corporation involved, find out what the issue is, and ask what they plan to do about it, rather than just blast them without asking any questions first. We try to have a full understanding of the research process and then come up with reasonable

"The long-range vision is that animals are no longer used in harmful experiments. And to many, that sounds like the anti-vivisection approach, but it's also the declared wish of fairly hard-line defenders of animal research, simply based on the notion that no one likes to see animals harmed in experiments."

approaches for how to reform a practice. We've found over the years that people want to know what the alternatives are before they'll stop doing—or stop funding—a particular area of research. We're interested in being effective advocates, not just criticizing, and in coming up with a long-range vision for the future.

Q: What is that long-range vision?

A: The long-range vision is that animals are no longer used in harmful experiments. And to many, that sounds like the anti-vivisection approach, but it's also the declared wish of fairly hard-line defenders of animal research, simply based on the notion that no one likes to see animals harmed in experiments. If we can create ways to get information without harming animals, we should do that. And we also think that the ethical considerations toward animals can evolve to the point where practices that were once seen as OK become off-limits, with or without the development of alternatives. This ethical evolution would go a long way toward curtailing animal experiments that should be beyond the pale of acceptability.

Q: How close are we to achieving these goals?

A: One of our priorities is to push the notion of transforming toxicity testing to the point where zero animals are used.

I served on a committee of the National Research Council that published a report last June outlining a vision of the future that, in the short term, would rely on animals to a certain extent as a fallback, but that, as an overarching approach, calls for in vitro research using tissues, molecules, and the like. So that is a real milestone in this arena. It changes the thinking.

Whereas once alternatives were thought of as simply "adjuncts"—which was used as a pejorative term—this report envisions them as the primary methods for toxicity testing in the future. We have also developed a new website with Procter & Gamble, AltTox.org, that is exclusively devoted to non-animal methods of testing.

Q: In addition to promoting alternative methods, what are we doing for animals in laboratories right now?

A: We are working on a technical report that will include extended pieces from world-renowned scientists who attended our workshop on pain and distress issues. This will be something that is largely for the scientific community to fill a void in the scientific literature, particularly on distress. There's been a certain degree of attention and some success in eliminating pain, but there has not been that level of attention and success in dealing with distress.

Q: And that's more related to the behavioral health of the animals?

A: Yes, it's the notion that an animal can be in a continual state of fear or anxiety or depression owing to experimental manipulation, poor housing conditions, or rough handling—and that this needs some attention because it has obvious impacts on the welfare of the animal and can in turn impact the quality of the science.

So it's not enough to simply give a painkiller to an animal. If that animal is distressed, then one needs to be attentive to the source of the distress and do some assessment and treatment.

“Mice, rats, and other rodents constitute so many of the animals in labs, yet there's an attitude that these animals don't quite experience the suffering that other animals can experience. This human bias no doubt has something to do with the animals' small size and their stoic demeanor. They're not like dogs who will let you know what's going on.

Q: Is this particularly a problem for animals like mice who aren't covered under the Animal Welfare Act?

A: Yes. Mice, rats, and other rodents constitute so many of the animals in labs, yet there's an attitude that these animals don't quite experience the suffering that other animals can experience. This human bias no doubt has something to do with the animals' small size and their stoic demeanor. They're not like dogs who will let you know what's going on.

Typically these animals quietly endure pain or distress, discomfort, illness, malaise. And for a biologist like me who has studied animals in the wild, it's very understandable why a prey species like a mouse would not jump up and down and call attention to himself if he were injured or in pain. These animals have evolved to conceal themselves from predators and conceal any injury they might have that might make them easier prey.

So it's especially sad that these are the animals who are used the most in the lab. It's easy for the technician or the veterinarian to take a peek at these animals in their shoebox cage and say, "Oh, they're fine," and move on.

Q: What are we doing to help researchers understand this phenomenon?

A: We advocate a more sophisticated approach to assessing whether animals are in pain or distress.

One way is to use score sheets that have critical parameters on them and rate the animal based on how their coat looks, for example. Is it all ruffled? Are the animals in a hunched posture? These subtle signs can be indicators that something's seriously wrong. We want people to use the tools of animal behavior (ethology).

Biomedical research is a scientific enterprise, and it should take advantage of other scientific tools to assess how these animals are doing. To that end, we publish the quarterly Pain & Distress Report to help address these issues. It goes to the people associated with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees at universities and in private industry—because those folks are at the frontlines in evaluating proposed procedures and improving them. And it also goes to individual lab animal veterinarians, animal researchers, and technicians.

Q: Animals used in research aren't any different from animals in the wild, are they? How do you change the culture's perception of "laboratory animals"?

A: Typically, if you look at our writings, we don't often use the phrase "laboratory animals" for that reason. Even animals who've been bred for generations for research readily revert to their ancestral behavior when they're given the opportunity.

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There are 1,200 chimpanzees in biomedical laboratories.

There is a revealing film that documents rats who'd been taken from the lab and put in an enclosed natural area; right away the animals started digging burrows, building nests, and creating a whole society. The film puts the lie to this notion that the animals have been bred for life in the lab and therefore they'll be perfectly content to be in a small cage.

Q: What are your other priorities right now?

A: One is to end the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research.

Chimpanzees do not belong in the laboratories—they're our closest cousins and it's virtually impossible to create an environment in the laboratory that attends to their psychological and other needs. So we feel the time has come to end this practice and to put these animals in sanctuaries where they can live out their lives. There are 1,200 left in biomedical labs, some of whom are simply being warehoused and not even used.

Q: How has the research community responded to our campaign to help chimps?

A: We have lots of good contacts within the scientific community who are willing to help us and work with us. I think the scientific backing we received for the CHIMP Act in 2000—which basically set up the national sanctuary system for chimpanzees formerly used in research—was critical. We were able to show to legislators that there were prominent scientists who supported this idea.