2.6: Ethical Considerations
- Explain the "Three R's".
- Explain why research is still conducted on nonhuman animal subjects.
- Describe the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and explain the ramifications of studies like these on research.
Overview
In this section, we will discuss the ethics of conducting research, both on nonhuman animal subjects and on human subjects. We will discuss a handful of examples of ethical violations and how these violations have led to negative outcomes in some situations.
Ethics in Neuroscience Research
Research has a very complicated history with respect to ethics. This is true when discussing our treatment of nonhuman animal subjects and our treatment of human subjects as well. Let’s start by discussing the ethical considerations for nonhuman animal subject research.
Nonhuman Animal Subject Research
One area of controversy regarding research techniques is the use of nonhuman animal subjects. One of the keys to behaving in an ethical manner is to ensure that one has given informed consent to be a subject in a study. Obviously, animals are unable to give consent. For this reason and others related to animal welfare, there are some who believe that researchers should not use nonhuman animal subjects in any case.
There are others that advocate for using nonhuman animal subjects because nonhuman animal subjects many times will have distinct advantages over human subjects. Their nervous systems are frequently less complex than human systems, which facilitates the research. It is much easier to learn from a system with thousands of neurons compared to one with billions of neurons like humans. Also, nonhuman animals may have other desirable characteristics such as shorter life cycles, larger neurons, and translucent embryos. However, it is widely recognized that this research must proceed with explicit guidelines ensuring the safe treatment of the animals. For example, any research institution that will be conducting research using nonhuman animal subjects must have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) . IACUCs review the proposed experiments to ensure an appropriate rationale for using nonhuman animals as subjects and ensure ethical treatment of those subjects.
Furthermore, many researchers who work with nonhuman animal subjects adhere to the Three R's: Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement (Russell & Burch, 1959).
Replacement suggests that researchers should seek to use inanimate systems as a replacement for nonhuman animal subjects whenever possible. Furthermore, replacement is also suggested to replace higher level organisms with lower level organisms whenever possible. The idea is that instead of choosing a primate to conduct the study, researchers are encouraged to use a lower level animal such as an invertebrate (a sea slug, for example) to conduct the study.
Reduction refers to reducing the number of nonhuman animal subjects that will be used in the particular study. The idea here is that if a study can learn sufficient information from one nonhuman animal, then they should only use one.
Finally, refinement is about how the nonhuman animals are cared for. The goal is to minimize discomfort that the subject experiences and to enhance the conditions that the subject experiences throughout their life. For a full discussion of the Three R's, see Tannenbaum and Bennett (2015).
In conclusion, many researchers argue that what we have learned from nonhuman animal subjects has been invaluable. These studies have led to drug therapies for treating pain and other disorders; for instance, most drugs are studied using animals first, to ensure they are safe for humans. Animal nervous systems are used as models for the human nervous systems in many areas. Sea slugs (Aplysia californica) have been used to learn about neural networks involved in learning and memory. Cats have been studied to learn about how our brain's visual system is organized. Owls have been used to learn about sound localization in the auditory system. Indeed, research using nonhuman animal subjects has led to many important discoveries.
Human Subject Research
What about research on human subjects? We do not have to go very far back in history to find situations where researchers behaved in unethical ways towards their human subjects. One of the most famous ethical violations in history is that many experiments were conducted using concentration camp prisoners as subjects during the holocaust.
Throughout the years, psychologists have engaged in various studies that have pushed the envelope of ethical research, such as Milgram's study of obedience or Zimbardo's Stanford prison study. Studies such as these have led to the development of strict ethical guidelines for human research. As with research on nonhuman animal subjects, there is a committee known as an Institutional Review Board (IRB) whose role is to approve research proposals. These committees ensure that there is an appropriate reason for completing the research with human subjects and that the safety of the human subjects are appropriately considered.
To further complicate matters, here in the United States, we have our own history of when ethical violations intersected with racial/ethnic divides.
Indeed, members of groups have historically faced more than their fair share of the risks of scientific research, including people of color, institutionalized individuals, the disabled, or other marginalized individuals. A particularly tragic example is the Tuskegee syphilis study conducted by the US Public Health Service from 1932 to 1972 (Reverby, 2009). The participants in this study were African American men in the vicinity of Tuskegee, Alabama, who were told that they were being treated for “bad blood.” Although they were given some free medical care, they were not treated for their syphilis. Instead, they were observed to see how the disease developed in untreated patients. Even after the use of penicillin became the standard treatment for syphilis in the 1940s, these men continued to be denied treatment without being given an opportunity to leave the study. The study was eventually discontinued only after details were made known to the general public by journalists and activists. It is now widely recognized that researchers need to consider issues of justice and fairness at the societal level.