Research ethics valued on campus
Ethics at Utah State University are not only addressed during Integrity Week but are dealt with throughout the year.
Because USU is a research institution, special attention is paid to ethical issues concerning the roles of humans and animals in the research process, said Stan Allen, animal, dairy and veterinary sciences professor.
Allen is the director of the Laboratory Animal Research Center and is a member of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC).
IACUC is responsible for overseeing the use of any animal on campus whether it be laboratory animals, domestic livestock or wildlife animals used in research or teaching.
For faculty or students to use animals for research or teaching purposes, they must first fill out an application to the IACUC stating why they want animal subjects, how many animals they wish to use and how they plan to use the animals.
IACUC looks at how many animals are proposed to be used, issues of pain and distress, and refinement (the use of non-invasive technology) to decide on approval, Allen said.
No research using animals can begin without the approval of the committee, Allen said, and the committee always includes people knowledgeable in the area of the research being proposed.
IACUC uses the federal Animal Welfare Act to determine whether a myriad of animal standards are met, including how animals should be managed, temperature and how much space they need.
“In today’s ethics, it requires that we first and foremost use the minimum number of animals possible that can reach the objective of the research being done,” Allen said.
Allen said sometimes scientists use too many animals and other times do not use enough, therefore making their research not statistically valid.
Both instances are “a waste of animals,” Allen said.
Allen said ethics have also changed and evolved over time.
“What was acceptable years ago may not be acceptable now,” Allen said.
This evolution has occurred because there are more alternatives to the use of live animals and there are more appropriate drugs such as anesthetics, tranquilizers and analgesics that can be used to block pain.
However minimizing pain is not the only important safety precaution for the use of animals.
The word “distress” has been added to the ethical concerns of animal research and is a sign of ethical evolution, Allen said. Now scientists look at if the animal will experience stress and try to figure out what constitutes distress and how to alleviate it.
Another sign of ethical evolution, Allen said, is the declining use of animals in research and teaching. Allen believes this is because of video technology that allows a procedure to be taped and then shown in classrooms from then on instead of repeating the procedure again and again with live animals.
It is no surprise if the use of animals in research is so important, the use of human participants is as well.
H. Edna Berry is the chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) which overlooks the use of human participants in research projects.
Under federal law, all research funded by the federal government must be reviewed by an ethics board.
USU goes one step further mandating that all projects, regardless of how they are funded, are reviewed by an ethics board.
Berry said The IRB is made up of experts in the field and community members to stay aware of the ethical issues in the community and culture.
The IRB also takes special precautions to make sure that “at-risk populations” such as children, prisoners or persons with disabilities that may be subject to coercion or exploitation are protected, Berry said.
Berry said the use of human participants in research is an especially hot topic right now because over the last year two people have died while involved in research in the United States.
An 18-year-old boy in Pennsylvania died while involved in gene therapy research, but Berry said the boy wasn’t a good candidate for the research in the first place.
The boy’s doctors convinced him to take part because they were investing in the company doing the research, creating an unethical conflict of interest. Also Berry said there had been problems in the research which had not been reported, and the research methods had been changed from what had been approved.
“That is bad, bad, bad. That is definitely not the way we want things done,” Berry said.
Research of the disease asthma in June 2002 also resulted in the death of a human participant. A healthy woman in her early 20s died when she was asked to breathe in a medication to see how it made her lungs react. The medication was not yet approved for inhalation, Berry said.
Berry said USU is not involved with much medical research, but often reviews social and behavioral research as well as research in education and nutrition and food services.
“When humans are involved in research, you put the subjects in different kinds of risks: Social, emotional, economic and more. We want to minimize those risks and make sure any remaining risks are appropriate for the possible benefits,” Berry said.