This week, I’m having a bit of a rant. I have been reviewing a manuscript in which the authors confuse the Principle of the 3Rs with ethics. It’s a common conflation and/or misconception, and I want to bang on about it. So on I will bang.

The ethical justification for using animals in research is typically based on weighing the potential benefits to humans against the harms inflicted on the animals involved in the research.

From my experience, for a programme of work using animals to be considered ‘ethical’ in most cases (regardless of how you may personally feel about it), there should be:

1. A demonstrated commitment to both minimise any pain, suffering, distress and lasting harm for the animals involved and also to improve their welfare throughout their whole lifetime experience.
2. The research must be scientifically robust and rigorous and likely to generate new knowledge that is both needed and valued by society
3. Alternative approaches that do not require the use of animals do not yet exist.

If these criteria are fulfilled polls suggest that the general public tend to deem animal use as acceptable.

Within animal research, decisions about whether a specific project is ‘ethical’ are made by ethics committees, or review bodies, who are tasked with carrying out a formal harm-benefit analysis, considering the specific context of the research, the way animals are cared for, treated and handled, and bringing to bear their local shared values and principles.

The 3Rs are about how we use animals:

The 3Rs are not ‘ethics’ in and of themselves, but the way in which ‘ethical research’ using animals is implemented.

Replacement: is about using technologies or approaches which do not involve the use of animals in experiments where they would otherwise have been used.

Reduction: minimises the number of animals used while still being consistent with producing robust and reliable data.

Refinement: minimises pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm experienced by animals, and improves their welfare throughout their lifetime experience, including housing, husbandry and the scientific procedures performed on them.

Ethics is about whether we use animals

The larger questions about whether animals should be used at all to answer a particular research question are ‘the ethics’ bit, and they involves a lot of chewy thinking.

Like:

• What is considered ethically justifiable? People will have very different views on this!
• Who gets to decide? Why?
• Who decides what research is needed or valued?
• What kind of benefit is ‘worth it’?
• Can we objectively measure how sentient an animal is?
• Can we really know how they are feeling?
• Can we truly measure how they experience their interactions with us (both positive and negative)?
• Is it just their sentience that matters when we make decisions about their use?
• What about their autonomy and the right to make their own decisions?
• What about their intrinsic value?
• Should we interfere with their integrity (physical or genetic)?
• What about their dignity or ‘naturalness’?

The ambiguous and varied nature of the answer to these questions creates so much uncertainty within the decision-making process for many. For some, the answers are easy, and opinions can be very strongly held. For others it can be a quandary, and minds may be changed time and again.

Tricky questions, tricky answers

Many of the decisions about whether to use animals are subjective, often influenced by our assumptions, beliefs, culture, and previous experiences. Many are best guesses rather than based on empirical evidence.

This must always be acknowledged when making contentious decisions about how we interact with animals, regardless of their context. For example, if there is any doubt or ambiguous evidence about whether or not an animal may be sentient, and therefore capable of suffering, then the Precautionary Principle should be adopted.

Others, however, may not be of the same opinion.

Everyday Ethics

Considering ethical issues is something most of us do every day, often without consciously realising it. At its very basic level it is simply “I can do this, but should I?”. It is more than just following the letter of law or policy, it is about deciding what is the right thing to do when faced with a dilemma involving competing or conflicting interests.

When it comes to animals in our care, we make all the decisions for them. Regardless of our purpose for them being there, whether they are companions at home, a farmed source of food, or in the laboratory, they are only there because we want them to be.

Animals in our care don’t have much control over their own lives or the power to make basic choices that we take for granted in our own.

We decide:

• what they eat and when they eat
• where they live and who they live with
• how they behave and where they go
• how they look
• who they have sex with
• whether they get to keep their offspring
• what harmful procedures they will undergo
• whether they get to keep their sex organs

All of these decisions involve weighing up what is the right thing to do, both for us and for them. Many of these kinds of decisions are considered under the R of Refinement, so implementing the 3Rs does include a certain amount of ethical decision-making.

Not So Everyday Ethics

But many folk within the scientific community are still stuck on the idea that ‘doing 3Rs’ is the same as having fully considered the ethical implications of a project, and this is just not the case.

Deciding on whether animals should be there at all for a specific context or purpose is the biggest ethical issue to deliberate and discuss. It can be the most challenging of all the conversations to have, with many competing interests (mostly human!). In my experience, it is not something that is discussed as often as it should be.

Reading back on what I’ve just banged on about it, it’s clear that this is my subjective perspective. You may have very different opinions. Tis the nature of ethics. What do you reckon?