Research Eyes

One of the papers referenced in the IASP curriculum is “Moral community and the responsibility of scientists” (Arthur Caplan, Acta Physiologia Scandinavia Suppl 1986, 128:(554)78-90). Here are my thoughts while reading this paper.

Do animals have moral rights? This is important because if so, we should treat them as human, giving them the option of not participating in an experiment. In humans this is done with “informed consent” and if you thought animal research was thoroughly regulated, human research involves even more oversights and paperwork. Of course you can’t get a signed consent form from an animal but it is feasible to set up an experiment which rewards an animal for participating in a painful experiment.

My answer to the question is, Animals have moral rights only if they have moral responsibilities. What is a moral responsibility? I’m not a philosopher, but I’ll assert it is only a moral responsibility when it goes against our nature, and when this unnatural action is for a greater-than-individual good, such as the good of our community or family. So it is unnatural to restrict our food intake but we’re probably doing that for our own benefit primarily so that doesn’t make dieting “moral” (however holier than thou we feel). But to deny ourself food so that there is enough for the children, that is moral.

Would you expect an animal to do such a thing? No. If an animal does a thing that seems moral (like starve to feed the babies) it is instinctual. (Or are we being instinctual when we think we are being moral? My opinion is no.)

Since animals don’t have moral responsibilities they don’t have moral rights.

That doesn’t mean we have carte blanche with  animal experimentation. It just means that “moral rights” isn’t a valid argument against it.

Individual Value

Some have argued for individual value. That it doesn’t work to claim that animal experimentation benefits humans, because in the process a lot of animals are harmed. (My daughter takes this point of view, in fact.) What good is it to save 10 human lives if 100 rats die? Well, most of us, particularly if we are the human whose life is being saved, would think that is a pretty fair price. But then what is the ratio? How much of a human life is a rat life worth? Is it 100 rats per human? 1000? How do you quantify something like that?

Some research isn’t going to save lives, it will improve quality of life. You could make use years of life affected, 100 lost years of rat life is worth 100 human years of improved quality of life.

Food animals are far more “wasteful” of life in this regard. Cattle live 15 years but we eat them when they are half that age. One cow serves 350 meals. (I got all these numbers from places like answers.com, so take them for what that’s worth.) At 1 meal per day, 7.5 years of cow life buys 1 year of human life.

On the other hand, that cow would never have existed if we hadn’t bred it, so maybe the 7.5 years it got to live cancel out the 7.5 years we took from it.

Back to the point, even if you are vegetarian you can’t deny that no animal would consider that a waste. Any animal that had pangs of conscience about eating another would fall to natural selection. Viruses have used billions of rats to infect millions of humans just to make more copies of their DNA. Our experiments allow other humans to make more copies of their DNA for a little while longer.

Best quote:

“The most convincing arguments against allowing researchers to conduct experiments involving animals have nothing to do with talk of ‘animal rights’ or photographs of gruesome animal experiments. The argument that the public is likely to find most persuasive against animal research is the argument that researchers are so morally arrogant that they will not deign to take their critics seriously.”

Individual value

Caplan says that we refrain from experiment on fetuses and farming the comatose for organs more out of respect for their friends and families than from the inherent value of the individual. Is this true? How would we feel about farming a comatose individual who has no friends or family? I find it objectionable; why is that? Is it because we identify with the friendless person as a person who, although friendless, COULD have been our friend or relative. “That woman could have been my mother,” we think. “That child could have been my son.” I refuse to keep a rat as a pet, because my research uses rats. If we go back to the concept that X rats = X years of human life (or quality of life), then can we calculate that X years of comatose life of a friendless human = X years of happy quality human life? “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one,” as Spock says, or is it “The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many”?

The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) published a curriculum which is basically like the table of contents of a textbook plus a lot of references. One can read all the references cited and should be able to learn the objectives listed in the curriculum. Half of the chapter about Animal Models of Pain is about ethics. I was tempted to skip through it. I’m an ethical person, right? I know how the rats should be treated. But I wanted to be thorough.

I’m glad I did. First, I learned some important things about pain from one of the references. Second, it’s a deep topic and has given me a lot to think about.

What the public really needs to know about animal research is that there are stringent rules and lots of paperwork in place regulating it. I don’t recall my impressions when I learned all this as a new graduate student. I have observed undergraduates’ reactions as they, new to research, encountered the regulatory agencies and went through the training, and friends as I mention the paperwork involved. “I thought scientists could do whatever they wanted,” is common.

Before we can do an experiment on a single animal, everyone who will have anything to do with the animal must go through training. At ATSU, this is a generic video that could be used at any institution, and the director of the animal facility talks to the trainee about how we do things here.

An animal protocol describing everything that will be done to the animals, how many animals will be used, and many, many details must be filed and approved with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The IACUC is made up of stakeholders within the university as well as outside, and includes one layperson. So the protocol must be written such that the layperson can understand the purpose of the research and the reason why animals must be used–not too much scientific jargon, in other words. You would be able to understand the IACUC protocols that I have written.

In this protocol the investigator must justify why animals have to be used and provide evidence of a literature search of at least 2 databases showing that there are no alternatives. We must justify the species & strain we have chosen, and the numbers of animals. We can’t just ask for 100 rats and say “I think I’ll only use 60, but I want to ask for 100 in case something goes wrong.” We have to specify what might go wrong and why we’d need another 40. (I typically request 10% more in case of unexpected death of an animal– although I have NEVER had 10% of my animals drop dead inexplicably! In fact it’s at most 2 or 3 rats a YEAR found dead, and I am almost always able to figure out why.)

Protocol approval is no rubber-stamp process. The veterinarian typically requests many changes and clarifications. It takes at least a month, up to a few months, to get approval.

Oh, all your animal care workers better be registered with Occupational Health and Safety Program. That’s not for the animals, on the surface it seems like it’s for the worker, but I think it’s actually to protect the institution from being sued by a worker. Working with rats, it is not a huge concern, the issue with rats is allergies and rat bites.

Approved protocol, trained personnel, finally we get to order some animals in. Once the rats arrive, the animal facility personnel put them in clean cages with food and water. Every day, including weekends & holidays, one of them visually inspects every single animal, and records the humidity and temperature of the room. I can do this as well if I like, but they have to inspect even if I already did that day. They make sure every cage has food and water and is clean. (Sometimes a water bottle leaks, for example.) If an animal appears sick, they notify the investigator and/or the veterinarian. Twice a year facility is swiped and bacterial cultures are grown to assess the cleanliness.

In some facilities, a “sentinel” animal is housed in the same room for a few weeks and then sent off for necropsy & pathology to check for infection. If one rat in the room is infected, every rat in that room has it. The animal facility at ATSU is relatively small and we don’t keep sentinels.

This is all standard to me, but people are usually somewhat surprised by how extensive these regulations are. I feel more than a small amount of pride in how well research animals are cared for. I know that food animals, the kind that end up in the grocery store (not the kind that come to the Farmer’s Market) aren’t treated nearly as well, which is scary since I’m going to be putting these things in my mouth! I’d almost rather eat rat-on-a-stick than supermarket chicken.

Stay tuned for further installments on this topic.

These lucky rats have running wheels. Rats LOVE to run!