Plans are underway to revise the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the Veterinary Consortium for Research Animal Care and Welfare (VCRACW) is looking for feedback from the lab animal research community to help shape the revisions. To do so, VCRACW has released a survey with questions to help identify areas of the Guide most in need of revision and how it can be improved. The deadline to complete the survey is next Wednesday, June 1, 2022. Read more
by Anne Meade, MS, PMP, senior manager for website and social media
The most recent revisions to the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals highlighted the importance of training for individuals involved with the care and use of animals. As Chris Newcomer explains in this excerpt on People & Perspectives, this was a welcome addition.
“I’ve seen indiscretions done in animal research…they almost always result not from somebody’s maliciousness; they result from their arrogance of thinking that they know enough to do a procedure the right way.”Read more
by Meryn Robinson, education and membership services, and Avery Avrakotos, education and policy manager
Since its founding in 1974, PRIM&R’s highest priority has been to provide those charged with ensuring research protections, as well as those involved in the design and implementation of research protocols, with the education, practical tools, and cutting-edge strategies needed for their work protecting subjects. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary, we are reflecting upon four decades of connecting and protecting and recounting some of the events that have shaped the field’s rich history in our 40 Years of [...] Read more
On March 19, I was able to view the final plenary session of the 2013 Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) Conference in real time, by attending the conference’s Virtual Meeting; this session was an interactive simulation of an IACUC meeting, complete with fictional scenarios the audience could to respond to via a text-message voting process. Overall, the panel was dynamic and [...] Read more
At a 1985 PRIM&R meeting titled IACUCs & the Ethics of Animal Research: A Conference on Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees, David Britt, PhD, addressed the question of whether animal care and use committees can evaluate animal use proposals without considering scientific merit. Britt, then a research associate in the department of veterinary parasitology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, argued they cannot. He reasoned:
“Unsound science is unethical. If the research does not engender suffering or squander precious resources, this may be unimportant, but very little biomedical research avoids both of these. If all research projects to be reviewed ethically are evaluated elsewhere for their scientific merit, [...] Read more
