Mandated Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees

Abstract

The animal care committee of a research facility was conceived, historically, on the model of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and, probably, on the model of review boards that hospitals and other sites for the provision of professional services developed to facilitate decision-making about withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining support systems for severely disabled patients, including neo-nates (Rowan, 1990; Orlans, 1993; Dresser, 1990; OTA, 1986). It was introduced in the 1985 Animal Welfare Amendment (AWA) and the 1985 Health Research Extension Act (OPPR, 1986) as a compromise between external regulation of the use of animals in research and professional voluntary self-regulation (OTA, 1986; Rowan, 1990). It is required by law that IACUC’s have a nonscience member and a nonaffiliated member (AWA only requires a nonaffiliated member, but OPPR requires a non-science member). The 1985 AWA was, itself, introduced by the “friends of science” to keep the public off the backs of researchers. (USC, HR 5745, 1984). One of the principal objections raised against the claim that the professions have traditionally made about the right to professional autonomy and self-regulation (and its scholarly version — academic freedom) is that scientists, working in an environment that requires published research for advancement, experience a serious conflict of interest in trying to balance the interest of their animal models with the interests of advancing their research. (See Loew and Rackow, USC, HR 5745, 1984.) The nonaffiliated member of the IACUC is supposed to oversee that the interests of the animals used in research are not compromised by decisions made by animal users (and the institutions that support them) when there is such a conflict of interest. As one historian puts it, “It is the role of the nonaffiliated member to see that the decisions about ethical animal use are made objectively” (OTA, 1986). Expressed in the regulations, the role of the nonaffiliated member is to provide “representation for general community interests in the care and treatment of animals.” The role of the nonscience member is not addressed at all, except in the clarification that this person “have primary concerns in a nonscientific area (for example, ethicist, lawyer, member of the clergy)” (OPPR, 1986).