Question 1: While biomedical research with chimpanzees comprises less than 1/10 of 1 percent of all the animals used, controversy about their use is intense. Arguments in favor point to their part in the history of successful disease research, such as the development of the hepatitis vaccine. In addition, it is argued that their physiological similarity to humans may be necessary to study new emerging infectious diseases. Arguments against their use are also based upon the established physiological and psychological similarities of chimpanzees to humans. In this case however, the similarities are seen as requiring the ethical protections available to humans as a simple matter of justice. In other words, if a type of research would be unethical to conduct on humans, then it is also unethical to conduct it on an animal that possess the characteristics that made it unethical in the human case. Here the argument rests on attributes like the ability to suffer, to have interests and desires, to have a sense of self that endures through time.
What is your evaluation of this issue?
Question 2: The Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which provides legislative guidelines for the use and care of animals in research, does not include rats, mice, and birds in its categorization of what constitutes an "animal" in terms of research use. Although these three animal types make up the majority of animal research subjects used today, they receive no protection from The Animal Welfare Act. One argument in favor of this situation, utilized by the USDA, is economic in nature. The USDA, to which the implementation and enforcement of the AWA falls, argues that protecting these animals would require an increase in their oversight budget and the number of inspectors of the animals themselves and their research environments. This in turn might reduce the level and quality of protection of already protected species (such as dogs and non-human primates). A typical argument in opposition to the stance taken by The Animal Welfare Act and the USDA asserts that this position of the federal government simply lacks logic. From this viewpoint, it makes no sense for the most common research animals to receive no protection, while animals as similar as hamsters and guinea pigs are covered by the AWA.
What do you think? Is the position taken by The Animal Welfare Act justified or not justified?
The Human Arena
Question 3: Do you find the process of applying to Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and/or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) helpful to you as a researcher?
Please comment on experiences working with both IRBs and IACUCs regarding their helpfulness, reasonableness, and efficiency.
Question 4: There is some controversy regarding whether those with impaired decisional capacity, such as schizophrenia patients, can ethically be involved in research. Typical arguments for schizophrenia patients' research participation assert that the severity and suffering characteristic of such illnesses make it an ethical imperative that we study these diseases in an effort to alleviate these conditions. Direct involvement of those with schizophrenia in such research is seen as indispensable. One argument against schizophrenia patients' engagement in research asserts that these individuals' cognitive and decisional impairments dispose them to be unable to give true and fully voluntary informed consent to undertake the risk of research involvement.
Under what circumstances is schizophrenia patients' involvement in research justified? Is it ever justified?
