Since coming to OSU in 2000, Randy Nelson and his wife, A. Courtney DeVries, have certainly added to the pain and distress of the animals used at OSU. ILACUC has approved 34 of their protocols with 11 falling into category E, pain and/or distress in NOT relieved.

As an FYI here is what The Chronicle of Higher Education (3/16/01) had to say about Randy Nelson coming to OSU.

Psychology Department at OSU Lures Professors From Johns Hopkins

PSYCHED OUT: Ohio State University is raiding the psychology department of the Johns Hopkins University, making professors offers they can't refuse. Two faculty members left for Ohio State this academic year, another is thinking about it, and a fourth professor was in Columbus for an interview last week.

Randy J. Nelson left for Ohio State last fall. He holds an endowed chair in biological psychology. "No matter what I asked for, the answer was yes," Mr. Nelson says of Ohio State, including a "substantial" increase in pay and a 6,000-square-foot laboratory, almost triple the size of his lab at Johns Hopkins. Ohio State also hired Mr. Nelson's wife, A. Courtney DeVries, an assistant professor of psychology, who shares the laboratory with him. Hopkins's counteroffer didn't come close, says Mr. Nelson.

And of course, they were brought to OSU because with them comes research dollars! Over the last couple years they have brought atleast 2 million dollars in grants to OSU.

In protocol 2004A0156, Nelson uses deer mice and oldfield mice (pictured below).

Protocol 2004A0156 will look at the effects of light and dark on behavior. The animals will experience short (8hr-L:16hr-D) or long (16-L:8-D) days and then be tested in resident-intruder aggression tests. The test is basically the Padgett/Sheridan social disruption/reorganization scenario.

Click on this link to view an example of this test. This is a quicktime movie.

UPDATE Feb 2005 - Approval for 88 additional deer mice and procedures to study food competition behavior. The food competition test will be placing two male 12 hr. food deprived mice in a neutral arena with a small vanilla cookie. The PI will then measure which mouse monopolizes access to the cookie.

UPDATE December 2005 - Approval for 150 deer mice to establish and maintain a breeding colony. "Due to inconsistent availablity of Peromyscus mice from the stock center in South Carolina we needed to start our own breeding colony. ...to promote breeding we propsoe to provide new breeding pairs with 2 leaves of fresh spinach per day."

2004A0133, Sickness Behavior in Inos Knockout Mice & 2004A0134, Sickness Behavior and Social Interaction.

So you wake up in the morning with the flu and just want to stay in bed. You don't feel like eating or drinking much, you have a fever and talking to people is the last thing on your mind. This behavior Nelson refers to as "sickness behavior". He writes in the protocol: "recently sickness behavior has been thought of more as part of a strategy to help the organism fight off infection." Is this really news? I'm not sure but it sure makes an interesting experiment.

You artificially induce "sickness behavior" in mice (and other animals) by giving them a component of bacterial cell walls called lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Many animal researchers use this to create sick animals.

From 2004A0133, Nelson writes: "Nitric oxide (NO) is a gas that has many functions in the body. In the immune system it is both used ti kill disease-causing agaents and to help regulate the immune response. NO has been shown to be involved in animals mounting a fever response to LPS. However, no study has looked at the behavior of mice missing the gene that makes NO when they are exposed to LPS."

And what would an animal experiment be without sex. 2004A0134 makes this observation about sick male mice. "males but not females will mate while sick. In fact, males do not show the symptons of illness when a sexually receptive female is present." Okay I have no comment but I imagine we could ask thousands of human couples and find the same response, but let's kill some animals to understand why because it's important to human survival. I always thought it was just fun and felt good. LPS will be injected in the males for this experiment.

2004A0133 will use 32 mice (16 knockout/16 wild-type) and will be maintained alive no more than 2 months at which time they will be killed.

2004A0134 will use 60 male mice, 25 ovariectomized females, and 20 juvenile males. And you are now saying, wait didn't I read about receptive females? You did. The females will be made receptive (atleast 4 times) by hormone injections.

No details are provided but an amendment to ILACUC was submitted in December 2004, which states: "The early results of this experiment were not consistent with our hypotheses, however they were exciting." Nelson requests an additional 60 males and 80 females to continue his work. ILACUC approves the amendment.

March 2005 another amendment comes into ILACUC requesting an expansion of their work to include females as Nelson wishes to know if LPS alters maternal aggression.

"The females would be mated ...and then allowed to carry their litters to term. The litters would be culled to six at three days of age and at 5 days a maternal aggression test will be performed. This test involves placing a sexually naive male into the cage with the dam and pups for 20 minutes. The sessions are videotaped and scored later for aggressive encounters. The test sessions will be observed live and ended if any animals, including the pups appear to be in danger. Following the aggression session the females will be anesthetized with isoflurane vapors and rapidly decapitated. Pups will be killed by an overdose of isoflurane anesthesia and subsequent freezing as recommended by the AVMA. Intruder males will be used no more than three times and will be euthanized with CO2 vapors following the aggression tasks."

July 2005 an amendment is approved which modifies some procedures. Using 45 male mice, Nelson will restraint stress ( 2 hrs daily for 14 days) 24 mice while injecting LPS in some followed by a taste stimulus of saccharine & water. He predicts that chronically stressed mice prior to the association of LPS (making them ill) with saccharine will create a taste aversion. The other 24 mice will not be subjected to stress but will follow the other parameters. All the mice are killed at the conclusion of the experiment.