- Reduction is... Well, how many animals do you have to use? What are the numbers of animals do you need to reach your conclusion? Can you reduce that number? And then replacement, is there something you can do with less sentient animal? And like right now, you know, they use zebrafish as opposed to lab rats. So things like that is a replacement, or using models and simulation, which, you know, as technology progressed. And refinement is, what can you do to the animal to prevent pain and distress to that animal, or lessen pain and distress? Like, can you give an anesthesia, or a pain medicine, or something to relieve that? - [Voiceover] You're listening to "Further Together the ORAU Podcast". Join Michael Holtz and his guests for conversations about all things ORAU. They'll talk about ORAU storied history, our impact on an ever-changing world, our innovative, scientific, and technical solutions for our customers, and our commitment to the communities where we do business. Welcome to "Further Together, the ORAU Podcast". - Happy Wednesday, and welcome to another episode of "Further Together the ORAU Podcast". I'm your host, Michael Holtz, from ORAU's Communications and Marketing Department. And we have a great show this week featuring a new voice to the podcast. I'm really excited to have Marci Savoy with us. She has coauthored a chapter of a new book that has been published, and we are gonna talk all about that, but first I want to welcome Marci to the podcast. So Marci, welcome. - Thank you, Michael, glad to be here. - I'm glad to have you here. Tell us a little bit about who you are. - Well, I'm Marci Savoy, and I began my working career after getting a teaching endorsement. Prior to that, I was a graduate student, and I worked my way all the way up to a PhD, and completed a PhD in soil microbiology at Louisiana State University. And my husband and I, we both finished at LSU about the same time, and we were basically in the same field. So our options were few after graduation. So I had a job offer in Washington State University, and he had one at University of Tennessee. - Okay. - And since UT is closer to home, we wouldn't feel like we were moving to Mars. We took the UT option, and from there, I decided to go and get a teaching endorsement for high school, 7 through 12. So I did that for... And I got my endorsement, I taught high school, mostly biology and chemistry, for about 20 years. And then I was able to retire from that job. And I worked here at Oak Ridge, at ORAU, for about... as a part-time temp again, for about three years. - Okay. - And then I moved on, I got a position with Lincoln Memorial University as their medical librarian, because they have an osteopathic division there, they have the School of Osteopathic Medicine. While I was teaching, I was getting my library degree, and I wanted to be a school librarian, but that never seemed to pan out. So after retiring and after working at ORAU, which was basically in information science, what I'm doing now. And I got the position at LMU, and went there and worked there for five years. And then I retired totally, 'cause I was of age, and came to work for ORAU, because they needed somebody. So I was interested in being a part-time temp again, and it fits really well into my schedule. - Excellent. The reason I've invited you to the podcast is you have published a chapter, a book has been published, called "Finding Your Seat at the Table: Roles for Librarians on Institutional Regulatory Boards and Committees". And your chapter deals specifically with animal regulations, and the humane treatment of animals as part of research projects. So, if you would, just explain a little bit about your chapter, why it's important, et cetera, et cetera. - Okay, well, what the whole book concerns is the librarian's role on institutional regulatory boards, such as the IRB. And what I was a member of, either a full-time, or an alternate member, was called the IACUC, and that stands for Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. And basically how I explain that to people, it's the IRB for animals, so... So every university that does research, or teaching with animals, have to have an IACUC. - Okay. - So... I started out taking the place... Usually it's the veterinarian librarian who does this, I was actually the medical librarian, but our veterinary librarian had left, and we were in an interim position. So they had asked me to take the place. And more so than IRBs, there's a literature search component and an IACUC protocol. - Okay. - And that's why usually there's a librarian on an IACUC. However, they're getting more common too on IRBs as well. So what my chapter dealt with, the book contains both IRB and IACUC, is we specifically focused on a little bit of the research protocols, but we looked more into teaching protocols, and there's not much written on teaching protocols like there is on research ones. The literature is profuse with research protocols, but not so much with teaching, and this... Well, to back up a little bit and give a little history, beginning, you know, and I'm just gonna... Well, in American veterinary education, the first... it began, really, with the end of the Civil War, and the cruelty treatment of horses and mules was noticed. And the first Humane Society was formed shortly after the Civil War in Massachusetts. And veterinary education in the United States came about in the 1880s. And what really was... All you needed for that was 12 months of non-consecutive education for over a period of two years. And the only prerequisite was reading, being able to read and write. - Okay. - And by the 1940s, veterinary education is pretty much what it is today, the two-year pre-vet program, and the-four year professional. But in the 1950s, this started in England, there was... And I think, you know, and it stemmed from after World War II and the Nuremberg trials, you know, coming out of that. - Right. - Where two British scientists, Russell and Burch, came out with how to handle animals humanely when doing research. And the premise for them is what we call the 3Rs: reduction, replacement, and refinement. Reduction is... Well, how many animals do you have to use? What are the numbers of animals do you need to reach your conclusion? Can you reduce that number? And then replacement, is there something you can do with a a less sentient animal? And like right now, you know, they use zebrafish as opposed to lab rats. So things like that is a replacement. Or using models and simulation, which, you know, as technology progressed. And refinement is what can you do to the animal to prevent pain and distress to that animal, or lessen pain and distress? Like, can you give an anesthesia, or a pain medicine, or something to relieve that? So animal research was more focused on the 3Rs, we call those the 3Rs, by the 1950s. Well, in 1966, under President Johnson, the Animal Welfare Act was established, and it was enacted by Congress. And it was enacted because, unfortunately during... before that time, pet animals that belonged to pet owners, were being stolen for laboratory purposes. So this act was enacted to prevent that, the illegal trafficking of stolen pets for research purposes. And in 1970, the AWA, the Animal Welfare Act, evolved into a regulatory agency for oversight in animal use in colleges and universities. And this included veterinary schools. And by 1985, the IACUC was formed, to oversee each institution's... how they were handling their protocols for humane treatment of animals, both in research and teaching. But even when I took a training class at the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland, on searching for IACUC, 3Rs, to see if there are better ways to... How do you search the databases for replacement, reduction, and refinement? Everything that came out was research, and very little was done on, "Okay, well that's good for research, but when we train veterinarians, they've got to learn how to do certain things on animals." You know, they... And there really wasn't any protocols that addressed the 3Rs, when you were teaching veterinarians. So that's what we found out, it was very difficult to find information on what you can do. So for example, we had limited herds of cows and horses at LMU. But you have maybe 400 vet students, and maybe a herd of 25. Well, if you wanna learn how to take blood from a cow or from a horse- - Right. - there has to be resting periods, and how many students per animal, you know, things like that. And we really weren't getting, how do you minimize their pain and distress when... but you also need to train these veterinarians. - Right, that's a lot of needle sticks for- - Yes, yes. - for a horse or a cow, right? - Exactly, or palpitations, you know, that, to me, would be even, but... So this is the problem that we were having, because we are mostly a teaching veterinary hospital. Now since we were a Level 6 University, we had to do some research, but research was pretty much low-level, it wasn't like, big huge clinical trials that you would get in larger universities, so... But the teaching methodologies were really hard to find. So we decided to concentrate our chapter on teaching protocols. And really, I think I just found one good article that really went into teaching protocols, everything else was research, so we had to... So my book... well, my chapter, we pretty much extended what's okay, we've gotta think outside the box, 'cause we're not finding anything in your typical databases. So that's what our chapter concentrated on, little bit on research as well, but mostly the teaching. And well, where can... what else can we do? We gotta think outside the box here about teaching protocols. - So how did you solve that problem for the book, or is that a problem to be solved still? You know, in terms of, you know, you've got this one really good article on teaching protocols. How do you, I guess, get more information, or is that a need that is expressed, that like, "We need more of this?" - Well, what I suggested in the chapter, what we suggested, was why don't we treat this more or less like a scoping review, which is going out there, and looking for what was lacking and what is needed. So that... and when you do scoping reviews, you wanna extend your choices to outside the databases. So that's what I did in the chapter. You know, we did that in the chapter, and came out with a few suggestions that we could try for teaching protocols. And one of them were... Many university websites have... And we even had a little one of this, but there was one that came out of, oh, was it Cornell- - Okay - that had... And it was called, oh I can't think, it was the three Ts for the 3Rs. And what it was, was it's just a whole bunch of little recipes that you can make of models, to first start these students on, you know, how to inject skin, what skin would look like. And they were put out there for the public with how to make 'em. And so that was one good area where you could... When a professor submits a protocol to the IACUC, while we looked at this university website, and we suggest making these models to help intermittently while using the actual animal. So this might alleviate and give the animal more rest. So that was one possibility. And the second one where... well, let's look at federal sites. And what came to mind was the extension service. There are veterinary extension... extension veterinarians, I should say. And they work more with lay people, producers that handle, or have food, what they call food animals, those would be your lambs, and your cows, and chickens. And they go out there, and they show them how to handle them, how to administer medicine, and basically things like that, but especially for the handling. And you can find extension publication bulletins on university websites as well, or through the extension office. So that would be another place that you can look for a teaching protocol. - Right. - And the last one is gray literature. Often we don't go to gray. And this is really common in scoping reviews is to go to gray literature, which covers things that aren't published yet in databases. You may find them at conferences, or they may be white papers, that you can find them in institutional repositories at different universities. And this would be another one, but there are several databases of gray literature. - Okay. - Which would be an option, rather than going to the typical citation databases, or ones that have journals, actual journals in them. So this gives you another option. So those are the three main ones that we discussed to find different ways to handle animals, and to present them as teaching protocols, as opposed to the research protocols. And another thing is you wanna... Our university, LMU, had partnerships with local animal shelters. - Okay. - And this gave ample opportunity, because the numbers really didn't matter when you were teaching veterinarians how to spay and neuter, because you had all the animals you wanted at the shelter to learn that technique. So sometimes it helps to get your protocols down. You're teaching, like how do you clean teeth... - Right. - You know, for cats and dogs and things like that. And once you get your protocols down, and they're accepted, you can use them year after year. And what you can use are clients, the regular people bring their animals to the university to get their teeth cleaned. - Right. - At a cheap price. I've done that with my cat. But the protocol was set up. But when you go into actual veterinarian care for a client's pet, for a patient, they're no longer under the IACUC. So you'll see veterinary offices are not under the IACUC. - Okay. - But if they're gonna... if any type of research needs to be done, or if they take their animal to a university hospital, and they wanna maybe have to remove a tumor, and they have to analyze, you know, look at the tumor, and do pathology on it, yeah, then you have to submit a protocol- - Protocol, okay. - for that. But that's basically what our chapter was talking about, was how do we get more with the teaching and handling, and not so much with the research, because so much is out there on research. - Right, right. - And the IACUC also has to make... Twice a year we have to inspect our facilities to make sure they're adequate, well ventilated, clean, 'cause we can get these drop-ins from the USDA. - Mm, sure. - And these surprise visits, and that's not fun, you don't wanna get dinged, so you always wanna keep that up. And one of the editors of the book, Susan Harnett, she was from University of Florida, and they were responsible for the inspections at Animal World in Disney World. - Oh, wow. - So that... Even Animal World was under, since it's an institution, it was under the... it had to be under the auspices of an IACUC. - Okay. - And University of Florida was... - Was the- - was the center of their IACUC, so... - Gotcha. - But that's basically what we did, as medical and veterinarian librarians. Once we hired a new veterinarian librarian, then I became an alternate- - Okay. - so, member. But went through the same training, you have to do specific training, it's called, and I can't remember what it stands for, C I T I, CITI training. And you have to do these periodically, like every three years, in order to be a member on the committee. Mine are still... I have one with the IRB, and I have two with the IACUC, they're still good till 2024, so... - Okay. Good to know, right? It does sound like, you know, a really important topic, especially for, you know, those of us... And I know they're a legion at ORAU, and certainly in the community, who love animals, and, you know, have pets and all of those things, and farm animals, et cetera. So it definitely sounds like important, and very interesting, research. And I did have a chance to read the chapter, and I found it, especially the history, fascinating of how research on animals has developed, over really, the centuries since the Civil War. So I just want to say that, personally, I've found the chapter interesting and fascinating, and I think other people will too. So if they get a chance to, you know, take a look at it, so... - Well, I got my gratis copy. - Oh, nice. - They sent it to me. And just one other thing I wanted to say about, when you mentioned how the public... We have many members here at ORAU who love their animals, the IACUC Committee is made up of a variety of people. Of course you have your attending veterinarian. - Right. - And the chairperson was... he happened to be a PhD in animal parasitology. - Okay. - And you had to have one, and then you had to have a science person on there. So we had a conservation biologist. Then you had to have somebody who was non-science, and they considered me the non-science person, 'cause I was the librarian. - Yeah, yeah, okay. - But then we had two community members, and they really offered some really good insights to the IACUC, we had... I don't know what one of the... we had two, but there was one, I didn't know what her occupation was, but another one had a goat farm, and with some llamas. And she had... she was real into knitting, and had a tea shop, and she asked some really wonderful questions and had given some really good insight. And it was just very much appreciated. The ones that weren't scientifically orientated were more likely to answer these questions, which made you think, so... - Right. - So that's what made the committee really good is because it has to be like that by law. - Okay. - You have to have non-science and community members- - Community members, okay. - on the IACUC, so... - Gotcha, so that's really interesting to know, especially for folks who, you know, I don't... There's probably a process at every institution for how you become a member of the IACUC. - Yeah. - But if people are interested, they can certainly investigate that, so... - If they wanted to be a community member. - Yeah. - For sure. - Yeah, I'm not sure of the process either. - Right, right. Is there anything I haven't asked you that we haven't touched on, that you wanna make sure that we say before we close out? - No, I think I covered everything that we were involved in, in this chapter, but I just wanna say that I truly enjoyed... When they first asked me to be on this committee, I didn't know what it was, I was hesitant, but they needed somebody, and I was asked if I could replace... 'Cause another person that's on it, too, is usually the Vice President of Research- - Okay. - is on it. And he asked me if I would be on it after the vet librarian left. And I just found it fascinating. As soon as I got in there, I was just... You know, they give you the protocols in advance, and you can ask your questions, and it wasn't a... I have to admit it, it just wasn't a breeze-through process. There were questions that we asked the principal investigators, and- - Okay. - "Why are you doing it this way?" And you know, and if this was really necessary, and so... - So it wasn't just a process where you basically- - No, it just wasn't, you know, "Okay, you did your protocol, and you know, you go on," sometimes those meetings would last for three and four hours. - Oh, wow, okay, so you really dug into the protocols. - Yes, yes, they can get pretty intense, so... - Right. All right, well, personally, I hope I never have to go through one. But I don't see myself doing any research on animals any time soon, either. So, Dr. Marci Savoy, thank you so much for- - Oh, you're welcome. - being with us today, and for sharing your very interesting work as part of this book. Thank you so much. - My pleasure. Thank you, thank you for having me. - My pleasure, have a great rest of your day. - You too, bye bye. - [Voiceover] Thank you for listening to "Further Together the ORAU Podcast". To learn more about any of the topics discussed by our experts, visit www.orau.org. 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