Ethical issues: impact of the animal rights movement on surgical research

Abstract

The aggressive militancy of many animal rights or "antivivisectionist" groups is causing great consternation but little action on the part of medical and surgical researchers. Pediatric surgeons are particularly affected, since issues of tissue healing, growth and development, and organ or total-body responses to surgical insults must be established in the live organism, usually in animal models that cannot be replaced by other methods. Investigators have been threatened physically; laboratories have been vandalized and valuable data destroyed. Biomedical researchers have been called "animal-Nazis." The proliferation of animal rights groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have prompted the birth of pro-research organizations such as "Putting People First" and the "incurably ill For Animal Research" (iiFAR). The result of this pro and con activity is an extraordinary amount of time and expense devoted to cover the cost of new regulations and laboratory security (approximately $ 1.5 billion in the U. S. alone) at the expense of research budgets, adding to the increasing shortage of research funding. This situation has created dilemmas for the surgeon involved in basic animal research: is it worth taking personal risks to develop new techniques? Is it ethical to allow these fears to hinder progress in surgery? Should we do away with animal research entirely and test new techniques directly on children? Would that be ethical? These questions are difficult to answer, but must be addressed if we expect medicine to progress.