Angelo State University Sued After Refusing to Release Records on Animal Research Study

SAN ANGELO, Texas — A lawsuit was filed in District Courtin Tom Green County today by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine against Angelo State University seeking public records relating to a “foster care” experiment on dozens of mice that resulted in the animals’ unnecessary suffering and death.

The Physicians Committee, a national health advocacy group that encourages higher standards in research, filed a Texas Public Information Act request on Sept. 14, 2022, for Angelo State’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) protocols, and annual reports related to those protocols, including the “foster care” study, to learn how the animals were used and treated. 

In the “foster care” study, experimenters used mice to mimic the effects of multiple foster placements on children within the foster care system. Baby mice were removed from their biological mothers 24 hours after birth and then moved again to a new “foster” mother at 11 days old. Researchers tested the mice for “anxiety-like” behavior, killed them, and weighed their brains. 

Researchers concluded that mice who lived in one foster home, as opposed to two, were more “resilient.” Among the 81 mice killed in these studies, 15 died from cannibalism, and seven died from “neglect or infanticide.” 

Pointing out the absurdity of the experiment, Stephen Farghali, a research advocacy coordinator with the Physicians Committee, wrote in a Nov. 3, 2022, complaint to the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, “If this study is deemed scientifically valid, it is only fitting that we follow the results to the conclusion that children who are repeatedly moved to new foster homes are far more likely to be eaten by their foster mothers.”

Farghali added, “Is killing 81 animals necessary to ‘prove’ that human children are better off not bouncing between multiple foster homes? Killing animals doesn’t make it science. We think the public deserves to know how little these researchers value the life of their animal research subjects.”

The university denied the Physicians Committee’s records request on the grounds that IACUCs are medical committees and their records are therefore exempt from disclosure under public records law. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton upheld the denial.

Deborah Press, associate general counsel with the Physicians Committee, said Angelo State’s IACUC does not meet the legal definition of a medical committee, which is a committee of a medical school or health science center. “Angelo State is neither of these,” she said.

“Texas researchers can’t have it both ways,” Press said. “They can’t use public funds to conduct animal experiments and publish the results in national journals while hiding documents describing what they do to the animals.”

For an interview with Ms. Press or Mr. Farghali, please contact Kim Kilbride at 202-717-8665 or at kkilbride [at] pcrm.org.