As someone whose research involves using mice, I always get asked the question of whether using mice and other animals in research is ethical. To be honest, internal self-discussions regarding ethics are things that I believe naturally accompany animal-related research. I know that I have also thoroughly discussed this issue with my lab members on several occasions before.
First, I think it’s important to mention that researchers pride themselves in working with animals. It’s expected that, when working with animals in research, one should show animals the utmost respect and treat them as if they were a human colleague. No animal at a respectable research institution is ever harmed unnecessarily, and if the animal is expected to feel pain from a procedure or experiment, researchers make sure to give them the proper anesthetics and medications to remedy the pain. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the use of animal model systems, including mice, rats, fish, etc., is indispensable to research. By testing a new drug agent or a surgical procedure on animals, researchers can determine how toxic the intervention is, and if the tests are successful, the intervention may someday be used to aid human patients. Also, not all experiments need to involve animals, and often, other organisms, such as bacteria or plants, can provide just as much new information as using an animal would. However, for some studies, there is no better alternative than using animals, and tremendous effort is made to ensure the safety and health of the animals used. Personally, I believe the use of animals in research is warranted when the discoveries from the research can benefit the lives of human patients, which I think is the ultimate goal of all research.
The reason I brought up the issue of ethics related to animal-based research in this blog is because I was recently reading about psychological studies conducted in the 19th and early 20th centuries that used human subjects. It goes without saying that it’s obviously unethical and negligent to conduct experiments on humans. However, the stringent research and ethical protocols that govern research practices today were not in place when those studies took place more than 60 years ago. The benefit is that, because these studies directly used humans, the conclusions the scientists arrived at could not have been achieved otherwise. These studies unlocked some of the mysterious psychological enigmas and principles that control human behavior, and they are now taught in basically every introductory psychology class.
I will be discussing these studies and the fascinating discoveries they made about the principles underlying human behavior in my next blog, so stay tuned for that!
Akshil,
Couldn’t agree more and this is a very ‘grey’ area! Unfortunately before ethical practice was standard, many humans were forced into research or did it unblinkingly. Have you read or watched this movie…
Thanks for the comment Melissa! No I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but I have heard of the story behind Henrietta Lacks. Interestingly, during a research internship I completed after freshman year, my project involved doing experiments on HeLa cells, which were the cells originally taken from Henrietta Lacks (thus the name HeLa)!
Wow! Well, if you have time, the movie was pretty good and I am sure the book is as well!