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Journalism of Courage
PUNE, Dec 25: City laboratories are in a state of panic. After Environment Minister Maneka Gandhi’s new guidelines for animal experiments came out a few months back, they have been running around looking for agencies to take care of the animals. They have approached the Katraj Snake Park for a home for their animals. The snake park, looked after by renowned herpetologist Neelimkumar Khaire, has received offers of more than 250 monkeys that were earlier being used for experiments.
Nearly 25 labs in and around the city are experimenting on animals numbering in thousands and ranging from albino rats to guinea pigs, dogs and cats for the "benefit of science and mankind". “I have been approached by more than one laboratory which say that they can no longer experiment on the animals and would like us to take care of them now,” says Khaire. He has turned down the requests. Khaire maintains that with limited resources at his disposal he cannot take charge of the lab animals. Moreover, they have been bred by humans, generation after generation. This makes them misfits in the wild.
He has, however, offered to have a school for the monkeys, if the funds can be organised, teaching them to survive in the wild and facilitating their release back into forests.
According to Dr S S Jadhav, executive director, Serum Institute of India, which also uses animals for experiments, the panic has been spread by misinterpretation of Gandhi’s guidelines and the spread of half-baked information.
"Maneka Gandhi had demanded that all experimental animals in labs across the country should be registered with the government and a team from the government would come and examine the labs,” he explains. “The regulation has however been modified and an amendment has been prepared in Hindi which should be out any day after it is translated in English,” he adds.
The main objection raised by high profile organisations like the Indian Council of Medical Research and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research was that the regulation also asked for all experiments to be registered before they were started and permission sought from the government before trying out any new injection on an animal. “This would amount to a lot of time loss and would set back the experimental research tremendously,” says Dr Jadhav. At present there are about 25 laboratories including Government run, public health labs, State Drug Control labs, FDA approved labs and private ones around the city which are experimenting on animals being used for potency tests, undue toxicity studies, specific toxicity studies and by certain cosmetic companies.
