By Morgan Lloyd, news correspondent
A Northeastern professor’s research project about the effect of anabolic steroids on hamster aggression lost its funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to a report released Sept. 13 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
PETA previously condemned professor Richard Melloni’s psychobiology research for allegedly violating Massachusetts law.
“Massachusetts’ cruelty-to-animals laws prohibit animal fighting, and don’t exempt things that go on in laboratories,” PETA representative Alka Chandna said.
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) also criticized Melloni for wasting taxpayer dollars.
“After 20 years of cage matches, it is time to get taxpayers off this hamster wheel,” Flake wrote in his Wastebook, an annually-published report of what Flake regarded to be wasteful spending.
It is unknown if PETA’s email campaign or online petition contributed to the loss of funding. The NIH declined to comment on if the PETA or Flake accusations had resulted in the loss of the grant money.
Melloni’s research investigates the link between use of anabolic steroids, or synthetic substances that replicate testosterone, and increased aggression in hamsters in an effort to see if and how steroid abuse increases aggressive behavior in teenagers. He has conducted this research for over 20 years and published his first paper on the topic in 1996. He was honored by the Society for Neuroscience Press Book for his work in 2013.
As stated in a paper published by Melloni in the scientific journal Hormones and Behavior in 2016, the experiments entailed giving a select group of male Syrian hamsters daily injections of anabolic steroids, consistent with steroid use in humans. Melloni would introduce another hamster of similar size and weight into the home cage of the first hamster, monitoring it for aggression against a control group.
“All studies using live animals were approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and all methods used were consistent with guidelines provided by the National Institute of Health for the scientific treatment of animals,” Melloni wrote in the paper.
Melloni did not respond to requests for comment.
The studies found that hamsters who had been injected with anabolic steroids became much more aggressive. When another hamster was introduced into their cage, the hamster on steroids would respond much more violently than typical hamsters in the control group. These findings could have far-reaching effects when it comes to understanding steroid abuse among adolescents and adults, as the part of the brain that he studied in rodents is similar to in humans, according to Melloni’s research.
According to PETA, Melloni’s experiments were in violation of the same law prohibiting such acts as dogfighting.
“[The hamsters] were forced to fight, they were videotaped, there were winners and losers,” Chandna said.
Northeastern students drew a distinct line between unregulated animal fights and closely-regulated scientific experiments.
“It seems kind of cruel, but I’m sure it’s for the greater good,” said Lauren Bocage, a fifth-year economics and art history double major. “It’s kind of a complex thing.”
This controversy that has come up surrounding Melloni’s work is one of many being PETA is fighting against the widespread practice of animal testing.
“It’s hard to say, just because we do test so many things on rodents, who’s to say that this one thing shouldn’t be tested on rodents,” said second-year sociology and environmental studies major Cole Alder.
For PETA, the research presented not only ethical problems, but legal ones as well. Accordingly, the organization filed a complaint with the Massachusetts attorney general.
“[The research] seemed a violation of our ethical position in society, but also of Massachusetts anti-cruelty law,” Chandna said.
Whether this research will continue without funding from the NIH is unclear.
