Research with animals
jstemwedel | March 4, 2009
Americans for Medical Progress has announced the Michael D. Hayre Fellowship in Public Outreach, designed to inspire and motivate the next generation of research advocates.
The Fellowship is named in honor of AMP's late former Chairman, Mike Hayre, as a testament to his visionary leadership within the laboratory animal medicine community.
Fellowships are open to college students aged 18 or older, or to any young adult aged 18-30 who supports the humane use of animals in biomedical research and education and who offers an innovative proposal for peer education on research issues. Fellows…
jstemwedel | February 27, 2009An article in the Wall Street Journal notes the collision between researchers' interests in personal safety and the public's right to know how its money is being spent -- specifically, when that money funds research that involves animals:
The University of California was sued last summer by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that advocates eliminating the use of animals in research, to obtain records involving experiments. In its complaint, the group said "only through access to the records...can it be determined how public funds are being spent and how animals are…
jstemwedel | October 29, 2008Earlier this month, I wrote a post on California's Researcher Protection Act of 2008, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law on September 28. There, I noted that some opponents of the law expressed concerns that the real intent (and effect) of the law was not to protect those who do academic research with animals, but instead to curtail the exercise of free speech. I also wrote:
I'm left not sure how I feel about this law. Will it have a certain psychological value, telling researchers that the state is behind them, even if it doesn't actually make much illegal that wasn't…
jstemwedel | October 6, 2008The past couple years in California have been scary ones for academic researchers who conduct research with animals (as well as for their neighbors), what with firebombs, home invasions, significant intentional damage to their properties and threats to their safety.
In response to a ratcheting up of attacks from animals rights groups, universities have lobbied for the Researcher Protection Act of 2008, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law on September 28.
As described in Inside Higher Ed:
The law is part of a campaign, including litigation against animal liberation groups…
jstemwedel | October 3, 2008
Americans for Medical Progress has produced a new DVD titled Veterinarians - Speaking for Research. (You can get your own free copy at the Americans for Medical Progress website.)
You might consider this DVD a follow-up of their previous DVD, Physicians - Speaking for Research (reviewed here). However, the two are pretty different, perhaps suggesting some differences not only in the intended audiences for the DVDs (veterinarians vs. physicians) but also in the concerns of the segments of the public each set of professionals is likely to encounter.
In this post, I'll first discuss…
jstemwedel | August 5, 2008Once again, researchers who use animals in their research have been the targets of violence at the hands of animal rights activists.
As reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
In one incident, a faculty member's home on Village Circle off High Street was intentionally firebombed at about 5:40 a.m. [on Saturday, August 2], according to police. The residence belongs to a well-known UCSC molecular biologist who works with mice. He was one of 13 researchers listed in threatening animal rights pamphlets found Tuesday in a downtown coffee shop.
In the second incident at about the same time, a Volvo…
jstemwedel | March 26, 2008For those who have been following the activities of "animal rights" activists, including their attacks of the homes of researchers -- and the reticence of the public in the face of such violent attacks -- a recent Commentary in Biological Psychiatry [1] will be of interest. In it, a number of scientists call on their scientific peers to actively engage in dialogue with the public about what scientific research with animals actually involves and why it is important.
From the commentary:
The attacks are horribly misguided. It is impossible to reconcile the willingness of these terrorists to…
jstemwedel | February 14, 2008You've probably heard that UCLA scientist Edythe London, whose house was earlier vandalized to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars by animal rights activists, has once again been targeted. This time an incendiary device was left on her front door.
Abel and Mark weighed in on this appalling use of tactics to terrorize a scientist doing work on approved protocols -- protocols that had to meet the stringent standards imposed by federal regulations. But while the NIH and the odd newspaper columnist stands up to make the case for animal use in medical research and against the violent…
jstemwedel | November 20, 2007Likely, the throbbing mass of humanity at my university knows at least a little more than it did before last week, owing to an article in the student newspaper about the institutional animal care and use committee. (It was a front-page article, so the chances that it attracted eyeballs was reasonably good.)
A few things that jumped out at me:
The very existence of an IACUC is treated as news.
It seems to be a big surprise that university researchers (and physiology professors) don't just order mice like they do whiteboard markers -- maybe because most of the students (and, perhaps, a…
jstemwedel | November 2, 2007People with concerns about the use of animals in biomedical research should also be concerned about the actions of the Animal Liberation Front and other "animal rights" groups -- at least if they want other people to take their concerns seriously.
It seems that ALF views actions like the attack of the home of UCLA scientist Edythe London last week as somehow advancing its cause. This in itself makes it pretty clear to me that they have set aside reasoned discourse as a tool and gone straight to violence and intimidation.
Here's how the "Animal Liberation Press Office" describes the incident…
jstemwedel | August 27, 2007Lately it's struck me that when I post on the issue of research with animals, many of the comments I get on those posts see the issue as a black and white one. Mind you, these commenters don't always agree about whether it is the scientists or the animal rights activists who are on the side of the angels. However, many of them feel quite confident in asserting that all animal research is immoral, or that ideally all the judgments about what is necessary and appropriate in research with animals would be left to the scientists doing the research.
I can't help but think that there must be a…
jstemwedel | August 24, 2007 The other day I received a DVD made by Americans for Medical Progress called Physicians - Speaking for Research. (They indicate on their site that the DVDs are free for the asking.)
This is a DVD aimed at physicians, rather than at research scientists or the general public. However, the aim of the DVD is to help physicians to be better at communicating with the general public (primarily their patients, but also their family members and neighbors) about the role animal research has played in medical advances upon which we depend today, and the continued importance animal research will…
jstemwedel | August 1, 2007As a quick follow-up to yesterday's post about the suit filed against UCSF, I thought I'd point out some resources relevant to the federal regulations (in the U.S.) governing the use of animals in scientific research.
These are the regulations currently in place -- whether you think they do too little to protect the welfare of animals or too much to restrict scientific research, they're the rules of the game. If the feds are not satisfied that they are being met, the feds are within their rights to withdraw federal funding from the institution that is out of compliance.
The text of the…
jstemwedel | July 31, 2007Today a number of doctors affiliated with the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed suit against the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) alleging that state funds are paying for research that violates the Animal Welfare Act. Among the big concerns raised in the suit:
Experiments that were "duplicative" -- i.e., whose outcomes were essentially known before the experiment from experiments already conducted.
Experiments where there was no documentation that the researchers had considered alternative that would minimize the animals' distress.…
jstemwedel | July 18, 2007One of the strengths of science is its systematic approach to getting reliable information about the world by comparing outcomes of experiments where one parameter is varied while the others are held constant. This experimental approach comes satisfyingly close to letting us compare different ways the world could be -- at least on many occasions.
There are some questions, though, where good experimental design requires more cunning.
A couple years ago, the local media in the San Francisco Bay Area ran a series of stories examining "the [human] body's burden" of synthetic chemicals. The…
jstemwedel | July 3, 2007Planting incendiary devices, whether under vehicles or on doorsteps, even if you think the people you're targeting are doing something very, very bad.
Kant grounds ethical considerations in the imperative to respect the rational capacity in yourself and in others. Among other things, I take this to mean that when we see the ethical landscape differently than others -- including when we see others engaging in activities that we take to be unethical (because they violate Kant's categorical imperative) -- we have an obligation to engage them in a discussion where we ask them for their reasons…
jstemwedel | June 30, 2007A recycled post from the ancestor of this blog, before anyone read it.
In my "Ethics in Science" class, we regularly use case studies as a way to practice reasoning about ethics. There's a case I've used a few times involving research with animals where the protagonist airs some of her concerns (specifically, about her PI telling her to change the approved protocol several weeks into the study) to a (non-scientist) roommate. In our class discussions of this case, the question arose as to whether the roommate should even be counted as an interested party in the situation. After all, she wasn'…
jstemwedel | June 16, 2007I was reading the comments on Dr. B's brief query on ethical lines in response to a horrific story about the feeding of a live puppy to a large snake for the "entertainment" of teenagers, and I could not help but recall a conversation I had with my children a couple years ago about the feasibility of a pet snake.
While visiting friends in Santa Barbara, we went to a farmers market, where we encountered a guy with a backpack full of snakes. He handed one of those snakes (a cute little gartery guy) to the younger Free-Ride offspring. Apparently, the guy worked with the local snake rescue…
jstemwedel | June 9, 2007On this blog I occasionally note a major motion picture that is (tangentially) related to ethics in science, not to mention seeking your advice on my movie-viewing decisions (the votes are running 2 to 1 in favor of my watching Flash Gordon; if I do, I may have to live-blog it).
Today, I'm going to give you an actual review* of a DVD whose subject is ethical scientific research.
Because you ought to have options when planning your weekend!
A member of the Adventures in Ethics and Science Field Team brought me a DVD to review, "Ethics in Biomedical Research". This is a DVD produced by the…
jstemwedel | January 30, 2007There's been some blogospheric blowout (see here, here, and here for just a taste) about a recent PETA ad that many viewers find gratuitously sexist. To me, the ad and the reaction to it are most interesting because they raise a larger issue about how we promote our values and how we choose our allies. From Michael Specter's article on PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk in the April 14, 2003 issue of The New Yorker:
Newkirk seems openly to court the anger even of people who share her views. "I know feminists hate the naked displays," she told me. "I lose members every time I do it. But my job isn…