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Amateur animal testing, is this illegal?

M

MyExcuse

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Mar 17, 2005
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I was curious if one was to test various substances on rats if that would be illegal?

I have read that piracetam can produce more intelligent offspring in rats (if given during pregnancy). I would like to test this as it would not harm the rat, as there is significant evidence that it is non-toxic in rats and actually quite beneficial.

I don't own rats, and nor do I own any piracetam at the time. I am simply curious about the implications of doing some home experiments.

I would like to try this on the Long Evans strain of rats. They are supposedly very intelligent and thus a superior test subject.

Animals are awesome and I would not wish to harm them, I personally feel that if I was doing things to make them better/stronger/faster it would not be cruelty.

If this is a taboo/forbidden topic, just say so and I will delete this thread.
 
Yes it is illegal. In order to do in vivo trials of any description you must have multiple licenses and permits and you must document the entire process.

If you have interest in this particular subject, I suggest you approach a university and put your idea forth to the correct department. I'm sure there would be many Honours students willing to carry out such an experiment. Or alternatively you yourself could do a degree (if you're not already) and do your thesis on this topic :)
 
illegal under what law, cruelty to animals? assuming of course the experiments do not involved the use of a controlled substance or CSA (of which piracetam is neither)
 
hamhurricane said:
illegal under what law, cruelty to animals? assuming of course the experiments do not involved the use of a controlled substance or CSA (of which piracetam is neither)
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Yes. The substance is irrelevant, you could be injecting them with saline.
 
Yes, generally speaking, you do need licenses and various training certificates to legally conduct experimental work with animals. To be conducted at a univeristy, the experiment will need to be reviewed and approved by an ethics committee.
 
Are there any actual penalties and if so is it even enforced? I mean if Mike Vick can choke a dog and electrocute it then play ball a year later...
 
I realize that it would probably go unnoticed if I were to do such testing, however my main concern arises from the desire to post and subsequently discuss any results I would have.

If piracetam can produce smarter offspring, I would be inclined to do testing on multiple generations over a period of time to see the various results.

I am not connected with any professional institution, and would describe my ambitions as a hobby more than any serious pursuit. If I can get smarter rats that are also sociable, I can create a superior pet with scientifically relevant implications.

I digress, does anyone know the exact laws surrounding this? I can find plenty of information on laws and regulations applying to institutions and professional outlets, but nothing on laymen research. Would such testing fall under animal cruelty? and if so, if the pets are well cared for and healthy is that still cruelty by law?
 
I'd be really quite surprised if there were laws against feeding rats drugs to study their effects. I mean you can feed them poison, right? To rid your house of rodent pests?

I mean, sure, you'd never be able to publish your results in a peer-reviewed journal, because they'd probably required that your research would have been approved by an ethics committee. But I don't see why you couldn't do the research and publish it yourself on a drugs forum.

I don't know, though; I'm just guessing.
 
I really have no idea about regulations pertaining the "home hobbyist" but would be interested to hear.

Since it sounds like you do not intend to sacrifice the animals I hesitantly say go ahead and don't worry too much about reprocusions if you just want to post the results in a drug forum.

Have you planned your experiment though? Are you going to have a control group and several dosage groups? You may need a whole basement full of rats to get any reliable data. Plus, orally dosing rats is not as easy as it sounds. What will you do with all the rodents after the experiment?
 
Quanta said:
Have you planned your experiment though? Are you going to have a control group and several dosage groups? You may need a whole basement full of rats to get any reliable data. Plus, orally dosing rats is not as easy as it sounds. What will you do with all the rodents after the experiment?
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he is hoping to create super intelligent genius rats, so the question is what will they do with him at the end of the experiment.

the law is vague, but most countries require licensing to use mammals for testing, and there are severe animal cruelty laws. Wierdly in most of europe it is illegal to poison a domesticated rat but legal to poison a wild one tht is a pest.
 
More importantly - why would you want to carry out such 'experiment'? You say "you've heard" that rats fed with piracetam have smarter offspring, so why won't you just search the study on this subject and leave the poor rats alone?

I'm also interested how the law defines where the illegal experimenting on animals starts.
 
Are you going to have a control group and several dosage groups?
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As my main goal is to create a smarter rat, I do not really feel the need for such a rigid experimental outline (as in having multiple control and test groups). Although, if I were to do this, I would certainly have a control group, but the need for many rats is not as important. I would obviously need a control group to see first hand the differences in abilities of the test and control rats.

You may need a whole basement full of rats to get any reliable data.
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This is more for observable results. If a test rat does consistently better on a maze or memory routine, I will consider it a success. The overall statistics aren't as important as the general (per rat basis) results.

I would like to see if there is any cumulative change over generations. However, I feel I would need to learn more to see if that is even possible (cumulative effects) or if nothing would happen before I invest time and effort into doing excessive breeding experiments.

What will you do with all the rodents after the experiment?
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Well if I breed them, rodents produce up to 10-12 babies per litter, so either I will invest in a snake or I will give them to a friend who has snakes. Having worked at a pet store before, this saves quite a lot of money and so is quite economical. This would be for the babies and young rats only. For adult rats, I would mostly try and give them away to people who wanted them as pets. If I'm going to invest time and effort into this, it's going to be for all aspects of it including the resulting rats. I would even be willing to go as far as to pay for express shipping to a person who wanted a rat as a pet, just to get rid of any excess I accumulate.

I'm in this for a smarter pet, not for statistical results.

You say "you've heard" that rats fed with piracetam have smarter offspring, so why won't you just search the study on this subject and leave the poor rats alone?
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I'm sure "you've heard" drugs can have pleasurable, intoxicating effects, so why won't you just search for the experience reports on the subject and leave your poor body alone?


my reasoning isn't unfounded. There have been various peer-reviewed research studies on the prenatal administration of piracetam and the resulting effects on offspring. Most of the information is promising showing no definite adverse effects except for a few issues immediately post-birth that aren't an issue if the rats are in captivity.
 
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you were doing ok until you started talking about feeding baby rats to snakes.
 
MyExcuse said:
I'm sure "you've heard" drugs can have pleasurable, intoxicating effects, so why won't you just search for the experience reports on the subject and leave your poor body alone?
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That's a completely different thing. Knowing that certain drugs give pleasure is a reason to take them for many people. Here you're talking about giving drugs to rats, not yourself, for reasons yet unknown to me.

I too find it immoral.
 
MyExcuse said:
I realize that it would probably go unnoticed if I were to do such testing, however my main concern arises from the desire to post and subsequently discuss any results I would have.
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If you can't tick the right boxes regarding ethical treatment of animals, you won't be able to publish. If you aren't able to publish people will ask why - and then jump on this lack of certification and extend it to the remainder of your experiment, implying a total lack of rigor.

If you're going to do this yourself, you need to produce fuck you amazing science (like rats with tiny monocles who tell dry jokes) or else you're going to be marginalized due to the simple fact you didn't do it like everyone else.
 
The reason animal care laws are established is to make sure animals aren't being abused or harmed in any way without just cause. As long as you don't cause them physical pain (injection, surgery, tail flick, etc), emotional (?) pain (psychedelics, who knows what they do to rats) or force the drug on them (they freely drink it in water), then I don't see this as being immoral.

That being said, I could still see you getting in trouble for this because you're feeding a "drug" to a rat, but I doubt the penalties would be very severe, and with a good lawyer I'm sure you could get all charges dropped. I mean, piracetam is remarkably non-toxic in humans, and I'm guessing the same in rats, so you aren't risking any organ damage, carcinogenesis, or anything like that.

And I agree with lineartransform, if you don't do it rigorously, no one will care about your results, so there will be no reason to post them. Or at least not anyone worth sharing to.

elucidate said:
you were doing ok until you started talking about feeding baby rats to snakes.
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What do you think snake owners feed their rats? Does this somehow become immoral because he's breeding the rats? Or do you think we need to feed snakes veggie-rats from now on?
 
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