ILAR Journal Online, Volume 40(1) 1999: Bioethics of Laboratory Animal Research

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ILAR Journal V40(1) 1999
Bioethics in Laboratory Animal Research

Introduction: Toward a Coherent Ethic of Research Involving Laboratory Animals
Charles R. McCarthy

This issue of ILAR Journal begins with ethical history, proceeds to contemporary ethical theories, and concludes with practical applications of the ethics of animal research. The editors recognize that one issue of one journal cannot do full justice to the growing discipline of biomedical ethics concerning laboratory animals. We hope, however, that the issue will provide thoughtful readers with a basis for creating, embracing, or enriching the moral framework that governs their attitudes and behavior toward laboratory animals.

The second half of the 20th century has been a time when biomedical ethics has burgeoned, unlike any time since the creation of the university as an institution in the 13th century. It is not difficult to understand why the field of biomedical ethics has taken a central place in philosophy departments, medical schools, and science departments throughout the United States and western Europe. The dramatic advances of the biological sciences, and the equally dramatic growth of science-based technology, have raised critical problems that were previously considered to be hypothetical, while providing new urgency to the resolution of old problems.

Consider for a moment that combined public and private funds support more than $40 billion worth of biomedical research each year. For more than 50 yr, our country has generated more heat than light in clarifying the rights and wrongs of abortion. We seem to be no closer to a national consensus on that issue than we were when it was "settled" in Roe versus Wade. Problems that range from the moral propriety of fetal research, human in vitro fertilization, and the use of "fertility drugs" are addressed by the public in general and by trained ethicists in particular. The permissibility of research involving cognitively impaired patients challenges our society and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Altering human genetic codes, gene splicing, organ procurement and transplantation, advance directives governing the limits to treatment or the conditions under which an incompetent person may be involved as a research subject provide complex and vexing moral as well as scientific questions. Issuing "DO NOT RESUSCITATE" orders, controlling intractable pain by administering life-threatening doses of morphine or other palliative drugs, advance directives, health care managed by insurance companies, the validity of a right to minimal health care, and many other questions have occupied the attention of a new breed of bioethicists who seek to provide a rationale for moral decision making in these and many other situations.

Perhaps no issue, with the exception of the abortion question, has generated more heated controversy than the appropriate use of laboratory animals. At the extreme, persons opposed to the use of animals in research have resorted to civil disobedience and physical violence to draw attention to their views. Although polls reveal that nearly 80% of the general public endorse the use of animals in research, that endorsement is conditioned on humane care and use of the animals. Consequently, the care and use of laboratory animals is among the most strictly regulated industries in the country, ranking close behind air traffic safety and the manufacture of safe drugs, devices, biologics, and food products.

It is surprising, therefore, to realize that there is at present no widely accepted, comprehensive moral theory pertaining to research involving laboratory animals. In fact, the development of ethical theories pertaining to laboratory animal research has lagged behind the development of medical ethics for humans. Some of the reasons for the slow development of theories establishing the moral status of such animals are presented in the first article in this issue by Lisa Sideris, David H. Smith, and myself (Sideris and others 1999). We believe that anyone involved in research with laboratory animals should have some appreciation of the history of such research and the ethical attitudes that accompanied that history.

The second article in this issue by Lilly-Marlene Russow (Russow 1999) provides an excellent precis of the major bioethical theories pertaining to the use of animals in research. Russow summarizes for the reader the major strengths and attractiveness of these theories as well as their associated weaknesses and shortcomings. She effectively dispels the common myth that everyone who asserts animals rights is opposed to any and all research involving animals, and anyone who opts for animal welfare favors or at least tolerates research involving animals. The leading ethical theories of our time cannot be so easily classified.

A view of laboratory animal research by Strachan Donnelley (Donnelley 1999), an environmental ethicist, provides an entirely different perspective on laboratory animal research than is presented by those whose primary ethical focus is directed toward animals involved in biomedical research. Donnelley sketches a broad picture of an ecosystem that includes wild, domestic, human, and nonhuman animals. In Donnelley's view, the setting in which an animal is raised and exists--in the wild, as a pet, as future food or fiber, or in the laboratory--is a critical factor in the determination of our moral relationships with and our moral obligations to one another and to the animals that share our ecosystem. Not only do animals have matter as individuals, but they interact with humans and with other living things in a complex and delicate ecosystem that must be preserved.

The role of the nonscientist in evaluating proposed and ongoing research is presented by Rebecca Dresser (Dresser 1999). Dresser shows that the so-called public or community representative serving an institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) for purposes of protocol review and facility inspections plays, or ought to play, an important role in deciding when and under what circumstances animal research may proceed.

A comparison of the Animal Welfare Act regulations administered by the US Department of Agriculture, Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals administered by the Office for Protection from Research Risks, and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals is presented by John VandeBerg, Sarah Williams-Blangero, and Tom Wolfle (VandeBerg and others 1999).

Readers may notice that the question of pain in laboratory animals is understated in this issue. No one should infer from this fact that pain is not important--indeed, it is central to any worthy ethical theory pertaining to laboratory animals. The reason animal pain is not dramatically featured in this issue is that an entire future issue of ILAR Journal ("Animal Models of Nociception") will be devoted to consideration of pain from a variety of viewpoints.

References

Donnelley S. 1999. How and why animals matter. ILAR J 40:22-28.

Dresser R. 1999. Community representatives and nonscientists on the IACUC: What difference should it make? ILAR J 40:29-33.

Russow L-M. 1999. Bioethics, animal research, and ethical theory. ILAR J 40:15-21.

Sideris L, McCarthy CR, Smith DH. 1999. Roots of concern with non-human animals in biomedical ethics. ILAR J 40:3-14.

VandeBerg JL, Williams-Blangero S, Wolfie TL. 1999. US laws and norms related to laboratory animal research. ILAR J 40:34-37.