Govt bans use of live animals for education, research

MUMBAI: The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has banned the use of live animals in dissection and other experiments in educational and research institutions. But scientists conducting new molecular research will be exempted from the ban.

Based on the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1960), the MoEF has issued guidelines to the University Grants Commission, ministry of health and family welfare, Pharmacy Council of India and the Medical Council of India to discontinue dissection and experiments with live animals in universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals, laboratories and instead use alternatives like computer simulation.

The MoEF says that the central government is duty-bound to use alternatives to avoid unnecessary suffering or pain to animals.

It states that effective alternatives in the form of CDs, computer simulations and mannequin models are available; they are not only effective as absolute replacements for animals in teaching anatomy or physiology but are also superior learning tools in teaching of pharmacy or life sciences.

The guidelines were framed based on the duties of the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments and Animals (CPCSEA), which has been constituted under the provisions of Section 15 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1960).

The committee comprises seven nominees - three nominees appointed by CPCSEA and the remaining four from educational institutes.

"The animal experiments should be stopped in all institutes except for the purpose of new molecular research. Sometimes, in laboratories, a lot of work is repeated and animals become unnecessary victims. Only scientists researching on a new molecular theory can experiment on animals. In medical and pharmacy colleges, there is unwanted cruelty towards animals which can be avoided. These guidelines mention imprisonment for five years and monetary penalty," said Mangal Jain, a nominee of the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC), which is appointed by CPCSEA.

Hoshang Bilimoria, also a nominee appointed by the CPCSEA, said the guidelines were a welcome change.

"CPCSEA should give the nominees the power to inspect animals housed in educational institutes, experimentation centres or technical laboratories without prior intimation to the institutes. Cross-checks should also be maintained through other members," said Bilimoria.

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Family comes first, among plants too

SAIRA KURUP

Caring and sharing within the family are traits we associate with humans and animals. But a startling new study has found that for plants too, “blood is thicker than water”.

They cannot speak, move, see or hear, but plants apparently recognize family and respect their space, says the study. It was conducted by scientist Harsh Bais and his colleagues at the University of Delaware. “At least 3,000 plants were researched and it took us three years,” Bais tells Eureka via email. He says that Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the mustard family and widely used as a model organism in plant biology, behaves nicely to ‘siblings’ – i.e. plants grown from seeds from the same ‘mother’. Interestingly, it is intensely competitive with strangers.

Fascinating and unbelievable though this may be, talk of plants and their ‘siblings’ is not new. In 2007, a team of Canadian researchers showed that plants can indeed identify ‘siblings’. But Bais and his team went a step further by discovering how a plant recognizes its ‘brother’ or ‘sister’, namely by root secretions. When the plant sensed unfamiliar root secretions, it began competing by growing more roots in order to absorb more of the soil’s mineral nutrients and water. But with ‘siblings’, they threw out fewer roots. When Bais treated a plant to a chemical that blocked the secretions, it seemed to lose its discriminatory sense. Clearly, there is something in these secretions that tells a plant whether it is related to others around it.

Strangers planted next to each other are often shorter, it noted, because so much of their energy is concentrated on root growth. “It’s possible that when kin are grown together, they may balance their nutrient uptake,” says Bais.

Harsh Bais with a PhD student at the University of Delaware

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Monarchs get radio tags

High hopes pinned on tiny creatures

Photo by Nick Krug. Enlarge photo.

National Geographic film crew members Charlie Miller, from left, Eddie O’Connor and Bob Poole grab footage as Martin Wikelski, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, and Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch, attach a radio transmitter tag to a monarch butterfly Wednesday at the Lawrence Municipal Airport. National Geographic came along to film the tagging and tracking process for a segment on migrations.

By Annalise Flynn

May 21, 2009

History was made Wednesday in Lawrence, and it was all due to some winged visitors making their way through town.

“What we’re going to try to do is something that’s never been done before, and that’s put radio tags on monarch butterflies, try to get them to fly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to follow them in the airplane and see where they go,” said Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch at Kansas University.

Photo by Nick Krug Lawrence Journal-World

Martin Wikelski, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University and Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch attach a radio transmitter tag to a monarch butterfly Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at the Lawrence Municipal Airport. Taylor and Wikelski attached the tracking device to several monarchs to test the piece of microtechnology in the field. National Geographic came along to film the tagging and tracking process for a segment on migrations.

Lawrence is a regular stop for the butterflies on their northward migration from Mexico.

National Geographic was in town to film the radio tagging for a new series, “Great Migration.”

Princeton University professor and biologist Martin Wikelski has used radio transmitters to track the journeys of other species, but never before has the migration of the monarch been investigated using this technology.

Wikelski, Taylor and the National Geographic crew were at the Lawrence Municipal Airport with their six-legged subjects. First, they fed the butterflies to make sure they had energy to carry the transmitters that would be attached to their bodies. The transmitters weigh about half as much as a butterfly does, which Taylor described as “startling” to the butterfly.

After releasing a newly accessorized butterfly, Taylor and Wikelski went up in a two-passenger plane for about 45 minutes to follow its signal.

“It moved a little bit to the north-northeast, which is what we expected,” said an excited Taylor post-flight.

They will be releasing more butterflies today in, hopefully, less windy conditions.

“This is the first step, and after we get through (Thursday), we’ll talk about where to take this then,” Taylor said.

Radio Tagging Monarch Butterflies by Vijay Barve

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Emerging Conflicts between Biodiversity Conservation Laws and Scientific Research: the Case of the Czech Entomologists in India

DAVID KOTHAMASI AND E. TOBY KIERS

The arrests and subsequent conviction of two Czech entomologists by an Indian court in September 2008 has opened a Pandora’s box of controversy. Petr ˇSv´acha, of the Institute of Entomology at the Biology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and his associate Emil Kuˇcera (an amateur entomologist) were arrested for collection of beetles and butterflies without a valid permit from the Singalila National Park in the Indian state of West Bengal, a violation of the 1972 Indian Wildlife Protection Act and the 2002 Biological Diversity Act. The arrests triggered debate in the global scientific community regarding the implications of biodiversity conservation laws for scientific research (Venkataraman 2008) and underscored the tensions in the three-way relationship between scientific collecting, species conservation, and efforts of nations to protect themselves from biopiracy.

Roughly 1200 scientists from across the world have protested the arrest and have petitioned the government of India for the scientists’ immediate release (Dubey 2008). In determining whether the arrest and conviction of the Czech entomologists erected unreasonable barriers to the access of biological resources for legitimate scientific research two pertinent questions need to be addressed: Were the Indian officials overzealous in arresting the two researchers? And is the scientific community justified in its criticism of conservation laws now that two of its own have broken them?

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