Do you eventually have to experiment on mammals/rodents to pursue advanced degrees / research in biology?

[CarbonBasedLifeForm]

I'm am not far along in the sciences, but I am curious to what extent a career in biology / life science requires someone to experiment on animals. Although I understand this is an important part of medical and scientific research, I'm not sure I'd be happy if my job personally involved animal testing. Do biochemistry, microbiology and genetics escape the need to experiment with animals? Thanks in advance.

[BioBio]

No, only a select few animal behavior, physiology, etc. studies involve unnatural animal suffering or death. These experiments require a permit that is only given "if the ends justify the means" and they are not given if a high level of overt pain is allowed. I cannot remember the name of the permit, but perhaps someone else can. Also, people that cause undue suffering to animals are basically thought of as jerks even within ethologists, and a paper that makes use of this kind of suffering is in all likelihood not going to be published or funding given in the first place. Simply put, there are an infinite number of life science experiments that do not involve animal suffering and within these, only a small number justify the use of mammals, as they are more difficult to care for and breed in relation to other animals (e.g. crickets) that are more tractably used for behavior studies.

So no, one could easily progress up through doctoral and professional biology studies without causing any real harm to animal, especially a mammal. Remember that mammals comprise only an infinitesimal portion of the scope of life, even eukarya, and research can be performed in any of these fields. Hope this helps!

[Nibor6000]

I was worried about this, too. I have been accepted into a Ph.D. program where I will be happily torturing humans!

[AlexM451]

To specifically answer this question for the three fields you mentioned:

Biochemistry: No way you'll be working with animals, you'll undoubtedly be doing in vitro work with purified enzymes or perhaps immortalized cell lines.

Microbiology: It's hard to avoid working with animals if you're studying pathogenesis, but general microbiology, bacterial physiology would not require work of that kind.

Genetics: Usually animal models are useful for work in genetics, simply because you want the most physiologically accurate environment to look at expression, or to identify a physiological function associated with the gene you've knocked in or out. But I suppose they're not used in every lab, especially if you're studying the molecular biology of transcription, or something of that nature.

I'm not really into killing animals either; unfortunately, I'm working for a pharmaceutical company so it's a necessity. Hope this helps!

[riceandbeans]

A lot of ecology and animal behavior research on animals primarily involves staring at them (ie, recording behavior) and collecting non-invasive samples (ie, poo). And even if you end up doing mark-recapture type stuff or minimally invasive genetic sampling, usually there is no lasting harm to the animal. But if you want to stay away from animals entirely, you can always go the plant route, which can involve questions from the molecular level all the way up to the macro macro stuff.

[ryanmor]

But plants have feelings too....right?

[LockeOak]

Not very many graduate students have to sacrifice lab animals, in my experience. Most of those that do are in pathology or related fields. Genetics rarely does, I know geneticists that don't work on organisms at all, purely computational. I have heard some horror stories from some of the people that work with mouse lines, though. Keep in mind the rules for working with lab animals only applies to vertebrates, no one cares what you do to invertebrates. I'm a coral biologist, we end up sacrificing quite a few. I hope there isn't a cnidarian deity and/or they don't count murders by the polyp or I'm screwed.

[NeuroNerd86]

as everybody else said, working with mammals is mandatory in some, but not all biological fields. A lot of research can be done with cells lines, c elegans, drosophila and zebrafish, to name a few. Mammals are just more relevant medically

[ryanmor]

You could always work with plants....

[bhmlurker]

I'm am not far along in the sciences, but I am curious to what extent a career in biology / life science requires someone to experiment on animals. Although I understand this is an important part of medical and scientific research, I'm not sure I'd be happy if my job personally involved animal testing. Do biochemistry, microbiology and genetics escape the need to experiment with animals? Thanks in advance.

You'll be better off to ignore labels such as department of Genetics, Biochemistry, etc. Whether a lab uses mammals/rodents in their research is purely that PI's perogative (with institutional approval, of course). If you want to know whether you'll HAVE to work with rodents/animals, ask the PI whether he/she is taking any students, and if so whether the project requires animal work or it's all in vitro/test tube chemistry. Name of the department or graduate program doesn't mean squat, because nowdays NIH funding favors proposals that have a human disease relevance. 100% in vitro work is hard to get funded unless if a co-PI is handling all the in vivo portion of the project.

Also, do you have a problem sacrificing animals, or are you against running assays on animal tissue homogenates/DNA/RNA also? I've met people who didn't want to sac animals, but have no problem running western blots on clarified liver homogenates. If this is the case, perhaps someone in the lab can sac the animals and prep samples for you ... in exchange for you doing something for them.

Edited November 11, 2010 by bhmlurker

[phira]

I've been working as a tech at a research institute for a year and a half, and I have to work with mice all the time. Almost everyone has an animal model they're working on; you don't get a lot of funding (or great data!) from only in vitro work.

Doing research involving animals is very tough, but it's necessary. There are very, very serious and specific rules and regulations involving animal research, though, to keep the animals happy, healthy, and free from pain (even when you do pain studies, the levels of pain allowed are very, very low). Believe me when I say that we do everything we can to avoid causing our animals any pain or discomfort. Even then, you'll see us apologizing to mice while we're giving injections or sac-ing them (or at least I was relieved to find I wasn't alone!).

If you're really, really, really against in vivo experiments and animal models, and you absolutely would never be involved in that kind of work, then yeah, I'd say that I'd avoid studying most subfields of biology (I figure plant biology and maybe some population biology would be doable, but I do cell and molecular, so I wouldn't know). It'll be tough to avoid otherwise, unless you're ridiculously lucky.

[PlutonicFriend]

It also depends on where your program is, the program I am in now is at a vet school so I have seen people use anything from mice, cats, dogs, deer. If they are using these animals to look at degenerative disease then yes, they get put down when they reach the humane threshold. This will also happen in Ag Programs, there are many biochemistry and micro programs hidden in Ag programs and many times these programs involve putting down animals as well.

However, I dont really see this so much in pure science departments, but in animal departments and some applied departments you will see it. I personally work in a lab that's politics don't support animal research in which the animals get put down, but my PI is a Vet who is an extreme animal lover. But I have seen some researchers that are at medical schools who do gene therapy with mice models and mice will have to be put down.

@Bio Bio the "permit" is called IACUC

Edited January 12, 2011 by PlutonicFriend

[GutLogic]

When I first started my bio major, I had this concern. However, as I've moved forward I've found that it's a complete non-issue. Biology is a really vast and varied field- in fact, biochemistry, microbiology and genetics are all vast and varied fields. If you don't want to work with animals, I'm guessing you probably also won't be too interested in the research topics that require it. If you are specifically interested in biomedical research, you may have a harder time avoiding it, though.

To give you an idea where I'm coming from, I majored in Microbiology (and did undergrad research) and am now working in a Biochemistry laboratory in a university medical center. I have applied to graduate programs in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Epidemiology, because I am interested in doing research on infectious disease dynamics. I have never worked in a lab that did research on animals, and have no reason to expect that I ever will. I have never had to consciously avoid it, and have never had to choose to do less relevant/less well-funded research for this reason. My undergrad lab was extremely well-funded, we worked with bacteria relevant to biofuel production & biochemical systems with applications to agriculture. The only living things I worked with were bacteria (which, by the way, can be pretty awesome). My current lab does purely in vitro biochemistry- not because we are avoiding animal work but because we are doing structural biology, looking at the way enzymes work at the most fundamental level, and have no reason to use animal models. Since it is a medical center, though, most of the other labs in my department do work with animals. As for my future research, I expect a lot of it to be done in front of a computer, except for field work which would involve taking non-invasive samples.

So, don't worry about having to work with animals if you don't want to, and certainly don't let it hold you back from pursuing a career in the biological sciences. As an added note, if down the road you are interested enough in a research topic that requires working with animals, you may find you feel differently about it. I ended up applying at one point to a biomedical lab doing animal research, because I was really excited about the work they were doing (though still apprehensive about working with animals). I was actually disappointed when I didn't get the job.

Also, just as a biased plug for microbiology, there are so many interesting & important microbes that aren't involved in disease at all. They are fascinating to work with, and you will never have to do animal research.