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Amateur animal testing, is this illegal?

Contrary to popular belief, animal research is highly regulated. To get a sense of how regulated, spend a couple minutes skimming through this guide for researchers putting research proposals together (it's over 200 pages long):

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/National_Academies_Guidelines_for_Use_and_Care.pdf

Basically, if you don't know what USDA pain category your research would fall into, and where to send your application for IACUC approval, and when your facility's last AAALAC inspection was, you should not be performing any kind of animal study.
 
I don't think it would be illegal but I have no real knowledge in this subject.
But you're talking about giving rats to snakes which everyone sees as ok, it's fine. However trying to make rats more intelligent... well geez man, that's pretty rough on them.
 
MyExcuse said:
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.
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I think this is unlikely as lamarck's theory of inheritance is incorrect. This will not alter their genes so once you stop feed them piracetam the next generation will be back to normal.
 
Are you mental? do not do this.

If most countries if you got caught youd get whatever years for contravention the animals scientific procedures laws and whatever animal cruelty charges are.

Any procedure in live animals is highly regulated and everyone carrying out a procedure must have a licensed not to mention the holding facility must have a license.

Where are you going to get lab male inbred albino wistar rats?

Have you done power analysis to find out how many you need? This is an incredibly complex study and christ knows how many rats youd need for a fully randomised design. You might only be bothered to do say 4 litters and that would not be enough to give you a significant result.

Do you even know how to ip inject a rat? and at what mg/kg? whatt you going to dilute it with, water?

All this is bureaucracy is designed so you cant just do whatever you have a hunch with, which is right. Although, you can do whatever you want with dead animals although the police might knock on your door if theres a serial killer on the loose ;0

If you are interested in doing animal work like this then great but your going to have to find somewhere to do it.
 
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chaos_destroy said:
I think this is unlikely as lamarck's theory of inheritance is incorrect. This will not alter their genes so once you stop feed them piracetam the next generation will be back to normal.
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Poor Lamarck gets no respect. Any teratogen affects the offspring in a way that could be called Lamarckian. Any voluntary behaviors that affect gametes or miosis are also manifestations of Lamarckian genetics.

That giraffe neck thing was pretty kooky though.
 
http://www.emmanet.org/ is an interesting project and somewhere you can purchase live breeding pairs or frozen egg/sperm of specific mutant mice for around 1700 euros. Have a look at the legal restrictions and ethics subsections on the ordering page though, which should be enough to convince you to forget the idea of either aquiring the strain you want or carrying out your plan.

Doing this kind of testing in anything less than a fully regulated and licensed academic or commercial research context is is totally immoral and worthless.

I don't think it would be a case of happy offspring being evaluated on wether they've learned to communicatie with humans by blinking in morse code after x generations of chronic exposure to piracetam - such a study would surely have to involve live vivisections to examine any morphological and physiological change too.

Forget the idea of giving away excess live rats to friends. Intentionally rehomed or escapee chemically-induced mutations of a mammal which is such a prolific breeder and public health danger could have terrible consequences,

If you really must why not try spiders or wasps

:|
 
I've already started in my project to evaluate a handful of compounds (4-(1-(dimethylamino)-2-(4-hydroxyphenyl)ethyl)cyclohexanone's and 4-(2-(dimethylamino)-2-(4-hydroxycyclohexyl)ethyl)phenol's) for analgesic and stimulant activity, and at least in the US, it's not as regulated as people think.

Whoever posted the grants.nih.gov/grants document is an idiot or illiterate, perhaps both. That document is largely recommendations and suggestions, applying to those who have NIH grants. HOWEVER, even more stupidly, all the poster had to do was read the first bit of the first chapter and they would have seen that it the laws that do cover animal research exempts pretty much anything that would be considered by the OP or myself. To quote:

In addition to the AWRs, there are the Animal Care Policies (APHIS/AC Policies), which were written to further clarify the intent of the AWA. The AWA, AWRs, and the APHIS/AC Policies apply to warm-blooded vertebrates that are7
8 CARE OF MAMMALS IN NEUROSCIENCE AND BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH
bred for use in research—except birds, rats of the genus Rattus, mice of the genus Mus, and farm animals used in production agriculture. The AWA, AWRs, and the APHIS/AC Policies are available online at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ac/ publications.html.
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If you're doing testing in the US and you're using rats or mice, you're largely free of official regulation. There are ethical concerns, but anyone who would even consider such activities should have no problem conducting themselves in an ethical manner.

I'm not sure how any of this is immoral. Morality has nothing to do with it. Treat your critters well, feed them high quality diets and kill them when you're done. Fairly simple.

Personally, I'm saving my LD50 tests for the very end.
 
Testing out some substituted O-Desmethylvenlafaxine positional isomers?
 
Heh, I guess they are. For analgesic properties, self administration, naloxone blocking, etc
 
Excellent idea MyExcuse. I have been playing with a similar one for ages. Full thumbs up if you are in good terms with your own morals and sovereignty.
 
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