Professional judgment as opposed to engineering standards is one of the central debates the National Academy of Sciences is considering as it revises its guide on animal research, a guide that affects the treatment of laboratory animals at most universities, including Penn State.

First published in 1963 and most recently revised in 1985, the guide's purposes are to assist institutions in humanely caring for laboratory animals and to set universal standards for animal care.

Those in favor of a change in engineering standards are concerned with physical requirements, such as cage size and psychologically enriched activity for larger animals.

This would require equipment changes and may cost thousands of dollars, said Mark Whary, research assistant and clinical veterinarian. He added that there is little scientific evidence that these proposed changes would be beneficial to the animals.

"We're interested in the scientific aspect as well as in the welfare of the animals," he added.

Frederick Ferguson, director of the laboratory animal resources program and professor of veterinary science, said certain standards should not be dictated because each institution is different.

"It could create more problems than it solves," he said.

On the other hand, standards based on professional judgment would require each facility to be accountable for how programs are run, Whary said.

Ferguson said most institutions use the guide, and because there is always the potential for revisions, this issue concerns researchers everywhere.

The guide, unlike the federal Animal Welfare Act generated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is not a law, but has been in existence longer than federal animal welfare laws. Institutions that receive grants from the National Institutes of Health are required to follow it.

"It's not unrelated but is separate from (the act)," Ferguson said. "It provides a higher standard than the law does because it provides more specifics."

There are about 10 to 12 cats at University Park that are used mostly for research in the psychology department, but more than 90 percent of the laboratory animals at the campus are rats or mice, Ferguson said. Most concerns regard larger animals, such as cats and dogs, he added.

Larger animals are used at the University's Hershey Medical Center where monkeys, rabbits, cats, sheep, calves and dogs are used for research in finding cures for long-term illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease. One experiment implants artificial hearts in calves.

C. Max Lang, professor and chairman of the department of comparative medicine at the medical center, said at this point it is too early to be concerned. "It's really premature to guess until something comes out in draft form," he said.

Animal researchers at the medical center have been threatened in the past by animal rights activists. But ongoing public meetings about the revision allow all people to voice their opinions, giving animal rights activists influence as well, Ferguson said.

Animal rights activists would like larger cage sizes and more opportunities for the animals to be social.

"The animals are not given the amount of room needed to move about," said Rebecca Courtland, a public information specialist at the Rockville, Md., office of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "The bottom line is that we need to take all the animals out of the laboratories, especially on the university level."

Revising the guide requires a lot of time and energy, Ferguson said. And final revisions are not due until fall 1995.

"Until we see the final guidelines, it is difficult to predict what the impact will be," he added.