Ch. 1— Summary, Policy Issues, and Options for Congressional Action • 27 
Six options for congressional action have been iden- 
tified. 
Option 1: Take no action. 
In the absence of new restrictions, animal use 
in research, testing, and education will continue 
to be governed loosely at the Federal level. Like 
the American system of education, control of ani- 
mal use can be largely a local issue, and institu- 
tional animal care and use committees stand as 
the arbiters of community standards. One draw- 
back of a minimal Federal role is the possible de- 
velopment of conflicting or confusing State and 
local policies. 
Maintenance of the status quo would reaffirm 
that Congress concurs that no methods or proce- 
dures are beyond the realm of societal acceptabil- 
ity (except the training of military personnel in sur- 
gical techniques on wounded dogs and cats in fiscal 
years 1984 and 1985). Maintenance of the status 
quo would leave unaffected the acquisition of ani- 
mals for research, testing, and education: Sources 
of animals today include breeders, dealers, pounds, 
and in-house breeding. Some States will continue 
to bar the acquisition of pound animals for research 
(see ch. 14). Finally, in the absence of a licensing 
scheme, investigators and their areas of inquiry 
will remain wholly a function of available resources 
and individual interests. 
Option 2: Restrict the use of certain kinds of 
animals. 
Some people feel it is wrong to use particular 
animals in research, testing, or education. This be- 
lief may stem from respect for apparent intelli- 
gence, and animals most closely related to humans, 
such as nonhuman primates, may be considered 
off limits for investigation or manipulation. Simi- 
larly, attachment to companion animals such as 
dogs and cats or to pet species such as hamsters 
may lead to a desire for their legislated immunity 
from experimentation. 
A restriction of this nature is likely to have sev- 
eral consequences. The restricted species would 
be protected while investigators faced, at a mini- 
mum, an inconvenience until new methods are 
developed. Development of new model systems 
would likely necessitate the generation of new fun- 
damental data about the characteristics of the 
model system, while the existing base of data— 
which could be large— about the restricted animal 
is set aside because it is no longer useful. In some 
cases, new methods would lead to a substitution 
of a less favored species for the restricted one . Per- 
haps the most important consequence would be 
that where the restricted species (e.g., monkey or 
dog) is the most scientifically appropriate model 
for research or testing, a prohibition on the use 
of that species may affect the ability to extrapo- 
late results to humans. 
Given that few, if any, kinds of animals are ex- 
clusively used in testing, research, and education, 
a restriction of this nature would be difficult to 
impose. How, for example, might a restriction dis- 
tinguish between primates under behavioral ob- 
servation in a field colony and those observed by 
tourists at a safari -style game preserve? Restric- 
tion of the use of particular kinds of animals may 
be inconsistent with the popular treatment and 
use of those same animals (e.g., circus, zoological 
park, sport, hunt, or farm) throughout the United 
States . Combining this option with the next one— to 
restrict the use of a species in a certain protocol— 
would yield a more limited, more practicable form 
of restriction than a blanket prohibition on use 
of a species. 
Option 3: Restrict the use of particular protocols. 
Some people feel that it is inhumane to manipu- 
late animals in certain ways, irrespective of the 
motivation for the procedure. Such concerns usu- 
ally focus on procedures that cause the animal pain 
or are painful for humans to watch. The Draize 
eye irritancy test is such a procedure, as are in- 
flictions of blunt head trauma in neurology re- 
search and of bullet wounds in surgical training. 
In research, blanket prohibitions either of a par- 
ticular animal’s use (the preceding option) or of 
a specified procedure entail a risk of being overly 
inclusive. They could have unintended or un- 
foreseen consequences, especially in the face of 
incomplete knowledge about how animals are used 
and in what protocols and what the results might 
portend. One risk of such a restriction would be 
the elimination of the use of animal models that 
may he the best available or the sole method of 
studying conditions present in humans but that 
