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The Indispensability of Holistic Species Experts for Ethical Animal Research

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Abstract

Committee composition is a recurrent theme within the literature on Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs). The ability of IACUCs to ensure the ethical treatment of nonhuman research subjects depends upon who makes up these committees. Non-scientists and those not affiliated with the research institution have been deemed indispensable for the democratic, objective review of protocols and, thus, for ethical treatment. IACUCs’ critics and partners alike have persistently offered suggestions for how to further optimize committee composition towards these ends. This paper contributes to the ongoing conversation by advocating for the addition of holistic species experts to IACUCs, arguing that holistic species experts are as indispensable for the political and epistemic viability of protocol reviews as non-scientists and non-affiliates. Holistic species experts are defined here as members of the larger community who have extensive firsthand experience with animals living and dying under relatively ideal conditions. If we accept that non-scientists and non-affiliates are crucial for IACUCs' ethical treatment of animals, then we have every reason to embrace holistic species experts. The values, welfare expertise, and productive epistemic dissonance that these experts bring to the table would prove invaluable.

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Notes

  1. The term ‘species,’ while imperfect, is strategically employed in this paper due to the reality that scientific vernacular dominates the IACUC discourse. When it comes to holistic species experts, however, species should not be understood in strictly taxonomic terms; different populations or breeds of animals within a single species may vary considerably in their forms of flourishing and interspecies politics (e.g., domesticated vs. wild vs. feral). These distinctions matter greatly for animal research ethics as well as for animal ethics more broadly (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Haraway, 2008; Palmer, 2010).

  2. The terms ‘research protocol’ (in North American) and ‘research project’ (in Europe and elsewhere) both refer to a document (submitted for committee review) outlining a proposed plan of study.

  3. For further reading on animal research around the world I recommend ILAR Journal’s (2016) special issue (57.3), “International Laws, Regulations, and Guidelines for Animal Research.”

  4. These committees emerged out of both (a) the ethically complex scientific terrain following the Second World War and the Nuremburg Trials and (b) public outcry over (i) laboratory conditions for animals as revealed by undercover journalism in the 1960s and (ii) the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the early 1970s (Greek et al., 2012; Hansen 2013; Rozmiarek, 2014).

  5. These framing documents include: the Animal Welfare Act (AWA); the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (PHS Policy); the U.S. Government Principles for the Utilization and Care of Vertebrate Animals Used in Testing, Research, and Training (Government Principles); and the IACUC Handbook (Handbook).

  6. Michigan State University’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (selected members) in discussion with the author, April 2015.

  7. It must be noted that the AALAS–FELASA working group regards—or at least describes—the harm-benefit analysis as being “based on the assumptions of maximizing utility for the majority where human interests count most” (Laber et al., 2016, 30). This is not, however, an unquestioned assumption within the literature on harm-benefit analyses (e.g., Grimm et al., 2019).

  8. AAALAC also requires AECs to have both a non-scientist and a non-affiliate, as do Canadian AECs who abide by CCAC (2006) requirements. By contrast, Directive 2010/63/EU (Article 38.3) does not require the “competent authority carrying out the project evaluation” to represent non-scientists or non-affiliates. Some member states, however, do require expertise and/or representation beyond scientific and veterinary, for example, legal, ethical, and, in a few instances, lay persons and special interest groups, such as animal welfare organizations (Silva et al., 2015). Interestingly, two of the four member categories required for Australian AECs are mandated to be unaffiliated with the research institution, those being: a Category D non-affiliate who has never been involved in animal research and who “should be viewed by the wider community as bringing a completely independent view to the AEC;” a Category C non-affiliate who is someone “with demonstrable commitment to, and established experience in, furthering the welfare of animals” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013). I will return to the matter of representatives from animal welfare organizations in the next section.

  9. For an in-depth discussion of the interspecies politics of fancy (and laboratory) rat breeding and the ways in which the fancy rat community productively blurs the boundaries between ethics and politics, please see “Just Fanciers: Transformative Justice by Way of Fancy Rat Breeding as a Loving Form of Life” (Gibson 2019). This paper also delves into the origins of domesticated rats and the different health concerns, kinds of flourishing, and needs that they have compared to their wild counterparts.

  10. This is not to say that there are not significant challenges associated with increasing the ethical diversity of AECs when it comes to sharing power and acknowledging non-scientific expertise. Indeed, this is an important topic of conversation within the international literature on committee composition (e.g., Grimm et al., 2019; Timoshanko et al., 2016). Recognizing these difficulties, the final section of this paper grapples with the specific challenges of recruiting and retaining holistic species experts.

  11. It is worth noting that there are contexts (e.g., New Zealand) where the AEC veterinarian is prohibited from being associated with the research institution (Animal Welfare Act 1999, section 101).

  12. Regarding the discursive model of the harm-benefit analysis, Grimm et al. (2019, 19) observe that “the theoretical underpinnings of this approach are not terribly well worked out.” I offer the following account of ‘productive epistemic dissonance’ as one way of unpacking them.

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  1. Environmental Studies Department, Antioch University New England, Keene, NH, USA

    Julia D. Gibson

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Gibson, J.D. The Indispensability of Holistic Species Experts for Ethical Animal Research. J Agric Environ Ethics 34, 31 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09871-2

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