Many animal facilities have experienced the problems that arise when needed drugs or supplies become delayed or unavailable. The impact on an animal’s physical health or a study’s continuation can easily be envisioned, but an incident at Great Eastern University illustrated how questions of psychological wellbeing should also be taken into consideration.
U-2484 was a drug under development by American West Pharmaceuticals in collaboration with Great Eastern University. Dr. Kenneth Reisman, a cardiac physiologist, was beginning to study the effect of U-2484 on various aspects of heart rhythm and contractibility. Reisman’s initial test subjects were two male rhesus macaques. Each animal was to receive weekly injections of U-2484 and monthly electrocardiograms for one year. The monkeys had been successfully pair housed for over a year before the study started but now were housed separately yet within eyesight of each other due to the need for Reisman’s lab to collect and analyze fecal and urinary excretions from each animal. Nearly eight weeks into the study, American West discovered that there was a contaminant in the excipients (inert ingredients) that went into the U-2484 injections being given to the monkeys. The study was immediately halted, but with the expectation that it would start anew in about two weeks, using the same animals. To avoid stressing the animals from putting them together and separating them again, the school’s IACUC approved keeping the monkeys in their separate cages, but closer to each other than they had been. Unfortunately, the two weeks stretched into four, then six, and then the study was discontinued by American West. During all this time, the two monkeys remained in their separate cages.
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