Ethics, Conflict, and Animal Research

EMBO reports, 2007

Science and engineering ethics, 2015

The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) is entrusted with assessing the ethics of proposed projects prior to approval of animal research. The role of the IACUC is detailed in legislation and binding rules, which are in turn inspired by the Three Rs: the principles of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement. However, these principles are poorly defined. Although this provides the IACUC leeway in assessing a proposed project, it also affords little guidance. Our goal is to provide procedural and philosophical clarity to the IACUC without mandating a particular outcome. To do this, we analyze the underlying logic of the Three Rs and conclude that the Three Rs accord animals moral standing, though not necessarily "rights" in the philosophical sense. We suggest that the Rs are hierarchical, such that Replacement, which can totally eliminate harm, should be considered prior to Reduction, which decreases the number of animals harmed, with Refinement being considere...

Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 2000

The book evolved from a lecture series on``Responsible Conduct in Science'' held at the University of California, Davis in which issues facing researchers in the field of animal behaviour were addressed. The editor notes that in the last few years both the scientific community and the public are being educated with regard to their responsibilities in relation to plagiarism and fraud in science; however, responsible conduct had not previously been addressed regarding animal experimentation. Some of the compiled papers in this book are anecdotal, some provocative, others provide justification for animal research; the general theme of the book is one of caring for animals and the recognition of a need for awareness and improvement of animal welfare. 13 of the 15 contributors are US based accounting for a US bias. However as many of the views are universal they are suitable for a broad geographical audience. Although the target audience is not specified the book should be of interest to any person involved in animal experimentation. I would also recommend it to animal rights activists to appreciate the concern that many scientists have about the use of animals and the steps they recommend in addressing those concerns. The first of four sections is titled Changing Research Practices Regarding Animal Care and Use: Institutional and Personal Perspectives. Comparisons of the rules and regulations from several countries (Lynette Hart) is followed by Donald Dewsbury's history of the Committee on Animal Research and Ethics of the American Psychological Association. Finally there is a very interesting personal perspective of a life working with animals in research by John Gluck. Hart's chapter, Moving Towards a Less-troubled Middle Ground, is acknowledged to be US based and intended to highlight, rather than be comprehensive. However an additional exploration of practices in emerging countries would have made an interesting and informative contrast. Multinationally funded organisations operating in different countries need to know and apply rules and regulations from other countries as well as their own. For example, our own investigation revealed only one relevant Ethiopian law under the Offences against Public Peace, Tranquillity and Order which states that a person is liable to``fine or arrest if, in a public place or a place open to the public or which can be viewed by the public, and without justification, he commits acts of cruelty towards animals or inflicts upon them ill treatment or revolting violence or brutality''.

Wageningen Academic Publishers eBooks, 2016

This chapter addresses the question of killing animals in research, primarily from a moral perspective, but also taking into account some of the practical and scientific considerations with moral consequences in this context. We start by exploring in which situations animals are killed in research and whether these are always inevitable, analysing re-use and re-homing of animals as potential alternatives. We then discuss for whomand under what circumstances-killing matters, considering situations where there may be a conflict between the wish to avoid killing and that to avoid suffering, and further take humananimal interactions into account. We argue that, although there are relevant practical, scientific and ethical arguments favouring the euthanasia of animals in most research contexts, there is a potential for rehabilitating more animals than is currently the practice.

Alternatives to Laboratory Animals, 2017

2015

Animal research has long been a source of biomedical aspirations and moral concern. Examples of both hope and concern are abundant today. In recent months, as is common practice, monkeys have served as test subjects in promising preclinical trials for an Ebola vaccine or treatment 1 , 2 , 3 and in controversial maternal deprivation studies. 4 The unresolved tension between the noble aspirations of animal research and the ethical controversies it often generates motivates the present issue of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. As editors of this special section, we hope that these original and timely articles will push the professional discussion of animal research ethics in a positive direction that will benefi t research scientists and others interested in moral problems in animal research. We also look forward to a day when animal research will genuinely meet both appropriate scientifi c and appropriate ethical criteria-criteria that themselves can be improved by critical scrutiny. Animal research-that is, the use of live animals as experimental subjects in biomedical and behavioral fi elds of learning-has been deeply entrenched for well over half a century. One signal development was the enactment in the late 1930s of federal product safety legislation in the United States and other nations that required animal testing of food, drugs, and medical devices prior to use by human subjects or consumers. 5 Another development was the publication of codes of research ethics that called for animal research prior to human research. The Nuremberg Code, published by an American military tribunal in 1947-48 after scrutiny of Nazi medical atrocities, stated that experiments involving the use of human subjects should be "based on the results of animal experimentation." 6 The Declaration of Helsinki, fi rst published in 1964, reaffi rmed this assumption and added, rather imprecisely, that "the welfare of animals used for research must be respected." 7 Against the background of such statements, the institutionalization and widespread acceptance of animal research in the twentieth century rested on two basic assumptions, one factual and one moral. The factual assumption was that animal research is suffi ciently reliable as a basis for predicting the effects of drugs, products, and other materials on human beings that animal trials can be expected to yield signifi cant scientifi c conclusions and medical benefi ts to humanity.

Ethics & Behavior, 1991

It is correctly asserted that the intensity of the current debate over the use of animals in biomedical research is unprecedented. The extent of expressed animosity and distrust has stunned many researchers. In response, researchers have tended to take a strategic defensive posture, which involves the assertation of several abstract positions that serve to obstruct resolution of the debate. Those abstractions include the notions that the animal protection movement is trivial and purely anti-intellectual in scope, that all science is good (and some especially so), and the belief that an ethical consensus can never really be reached between the parties. It is widely held that the current debate on the use of animals in research is unprecedented with respect to its intensity and to the extent that it has captured the public consciousness (Dewsbury, 1990). The debate is elaborated regularly in newspaper articles, editorials, personal help columns (e.g., "Dear Abby"), news magazine cover stories, television specials, and prestigious professional journals in a variety of specialties. It has also been stated by Dr. Charles McCarthy, Director of the Office of Protection from Research Risks, that Congress has received more mail on this issue than any other topic in the entire history of the country (C. R. McCarthy, personal communication, January 15, 1988). Although many authors (e.g., Feeney, 1987) have drawn attention to the similarities between the current debate and the vivisection arguments of the past century, these comparisons fail to capture the broader issue base of the present concerns. Additional questions relating to the use of and treatment of animals in product testing, clothing, sport hunting, entertainment, and intensive agriculture have been raised and related to the general topic of environmental relationships and the meaning and importance of the human-animal bond (

ILAR Journal, 2019

The principal investigator is an expert on the topic under investigation. The veterinarian is an expert in the health and wellness of an animal. But what, exactly, can ethicists add to discussions about animal research? This special issue of the ILAR Journal considers how contemporary ethics scholarship can be relevant to animal research. The articles were selected to highlight how clear thinking about values and the implications of those values can inform which research is conducted and how it is conducted.

Scientific American, 1997

F or the past 20 years, we have witnessed an intense but largely unproductive debate over the propriety and value of using animals in medical and scientific research, testing and education. Emotionally evocative images and simple assertions of opinion and fact are the usual fare. But we do not have to accept such low standards of exchange. Sound bites and pithy rhetoric may have their place in the fight for the public's ear, but there is always room for dispassionate analysis and solid scholarship. When it comes to animal research, there is plenty of reason for legitimate dispute. First, one has to determine what values are being brought to the table. If one believes animals should not be used simply as means to ends, that assumption greatly restricts what animal research one is willing to accept. Most people, though, believe some form of cost-benefit analysis should be performed to determine whether the use of animals is acceptable. The costs consist mainly of animal pain, distress and death, whereas the benefits include the acquisition of new knowledge and the development of new medical therapies for humans. There is considerable disagreement among scientists in judging how much pain and suffering occur in the housing and use of research animals. More attention is at last being given to assessing these questions and to finding ways of minimizing such discomfort. Developing techniques that explicitly address and eliminate animal suffering in laboratories will reduce both public and scientific uneasiness about the ways animals are used in science. At present, indications are that public attention to the animal research issue has declined somewhat; however, the level of concern among scientists, research institutions, animal-rights groups and those who regulate animal use remains high. There is also much room to challenge the benefits of animal research and much room to defend such research. In the next few pages, you will find a debate between opponents and supporters of animal research. It is followed by an article that sets out the historical, philosophical and social context of the animalresearch controversy. We leave it to you to judge the case.

2015

This paper is a brief summary of a report by the working group of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, which offers a new assessment of whether animal experiments can be justified morally. The Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics was founded in 2006 to pioneer ethical perspectives on animals through academic teaching, research, and publication. The centre is independent, and is not under the aegis, control, or sanction of the University of Oxford. The centre comprises an international fellowship of more than ninety academics drawn from the sciences and the humanities, and more than one hundred academic advisers.