Ethical regulation and animal science: why animal behaviour is special

Barnard, C. J.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.04.002

Cited by 37 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…However, curiosity-driven work in animal science is essential to an understanding of the normal behavioural repertoires, which should as far as possible be made available to any captive animal. This provides the evidence base for evolutionarily salient welfare (Barnard 2007;Ohl and Staay 2012).…”

Section: Ethical Demand To Ease Human and Animal Sufferingmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…In any case, with increasing emphasis on translation to practical benefit through the consideration of impact, as required by many research funding bodies, much fundamental 'curiosity-driven' research in the life sciences may be viewed as pre-clinical in so far as its implications for future clinical benefits are in sight. Similarly, increased ethical regulation and legislation has an impact on the study of animal behaviour for its own sake, yet in the longer term, further developments will be essential both for animal welfare science and to further inform public debate as to the legitimacy of animal use in general (Dawkins 2006;Barnard 2007;Patterson-Kane et al 2008).…”

Section: Ethics and Legislationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, replacement is not a logical objective in areas of animal science, where the animals are the object of study rather than acting as a model for a human condition (Barnard 2007). In this sense, studies of animal behaviour, which may include investigation of its underlying neural substrates, should have special status.…”

Section: Replacementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Statistical power could be improved to the extent variability is reduced in animals better accustomed to novelty and change but results might be more variable between laboratories if standardisation of more varied environments is harder to achieve. For example, depending on strain and previous housing conditions, increased cage size and other forms of enrichment can significantly increase aggression in some male mice, most likely because of increased territoriality (Barnard 2007). Increased aggression can be a particular problem in studies involving some neural manipulation but could equally adversely affect the outcome of other kinds of biomedical research.…”

Section: Rules and Recommendations: The Need For Flexibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in general, anthropomorphism provides an unreliable basis from which to gauge animal welfare and we lack insight into how the animal in question would normally wish to spend its time. Animals' choices may result in short-term discomfort yet make excellent functional sense in terms of 'adaptive self-expenditure' (Barnard 2007). Since the same refinements will not be appropriate for all species, it is essential that the effectiveness of environmental refinements be evaluated, for example through the use of preference tests and other behavioural and physiological parameters (Chmiel and Noonan 1996;Dawkins 2006;Fitchett et al 2006;Patterson-Kane et al 2008;Baumans and Van Loo 2013).…”

Section: Species Typical Behaviour and Evidence-based Welfarementioning

confidence: 99%

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What’s Special about the Ethical Challenges of Studying Disorders with Altered Brain Activity?

Cassaday

2014

Ethical Issues in Behavioral Neuroscience

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Where there is no viable alternative, studies of neuronal activity are conducted on animals. The use of animals, particularly for invasive studies of the brain, raises a number of ethical issues. Practical or normative ethics are enforced by legislation, in relation to the dominant welfare guidelines developed in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Guidelines have typically been devised to cover all areas of biomedical research using animals in general, and thus lack any specific focus on neuroscience studies at the level of the ethics, although details of the specific welfare recommendations are different for invasive studies of the brain. Ethically, there is no necessary distinction between neuroscience and other biomedical research in that the brain is a final common path for suffering, irrespective of whether this involves any direct experience of pain. One exception arises in the case of in vitro studies, which are normally considered as an acceptable replacement for in vivo studies. However, to the extent sentience is possible, maintaining central nervous system tissue outside the body naturally raises ethical questions. Perhaps the most intractable challenge to the ethical use of animals in order to model neuronal disorder is presented by the logical impasse in the argument that the animal is similar enough to justify the validity of the experimental model, but sufficiently different in sentience and capacity for suffering, for the necessary experimental procedures to be permissible.

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Section: Ethical Demand To Ease Human and Animal Sufferingmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Ethics and Legislationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Replacementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rules and Recommendations: The Need For Flexibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%