Ethical aspects associated with genome alteration techniques applied to animal reproduction research.

The revolution in biology triggered by the different genome-editing tools has of course arrived to the research field of animal reproduction. Yeast meganucleases, zinc-finger nucleases, TALEN and, particularly, the several generations of CRISPR tools have landed in animal reproduction thereby providing novel strategies to optimize or modify some of the features and capabilities of the recipient animals. All these genome-editing proposals and activities are associated with ethical considerations regarding how those planned genome alterations might affect important animal welfare issues. The ethical dimension of all these genome editing must be seriously considered. Hence, all ethical aspects bound to any given genome-edited allele in animals should be discussed in order to ensure that we are maximizing benefits and reducing any potential risk or negative considerations of these modifications. In this review, I will summarize some of the experiments reported aiming to investigate or improve animal reproduction and I will address the ethics issues that should also be considered.

How Should Clinician-Researchers Model Regard for Nonhuman Animals Bred for and Used in Human-Centered Science?

If we assume that nonhuman animals experience pain or distress, then ethically justifying human-centered research with only nonhuman animals as subjects likely requires that the research's benefits to humans must, at least, outweigh harms suffered by the nonhuman animals. Yet this reasoning does not seem to account well for the ethical view that nonhuman animals are morally valuable in their own right. This commentary on a case considers this ethical tension and discusses how clinician-researchers should navigate it. This commentary also suggests why clinician-researchers' reasoning about the nature and scope of their obligations to nonhuman animals extends beyond governing regulations and federal oversight, which is silent on or ambiguous about nonhuman animals as morally valuable in their own right.

According to Which Criteria Should We Determine Whether and When IACUCs Are Sufficient for Protecting the Welfare of Nonhuman Animals Used in Research?

Nonhuman animals used in biomedical research frequently suffer and are harmed as part of their use as experimental models. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of a given institution is meant to ensure that research protocols follow federal guidelines, but research protocols such as those described in this case can generate unnecessary suffering; this problem suggests limitations of IACUCs' capacity to protect nonhuman animals' welfare. This commentary on the case considers how to more fully protect nonhuman animals used in scientific research and identifies barriers to more comprehensive protection of nonhuman animals' welfare.

How Might Corporations' and Nonhuman Animals' Personhood Compare Under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments?

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits states from depriving any person "equal protection of the laws," and the Constitution's Fifth Amendment has been interpreted as applying this prohibition to the federal government. This article considers whether constitutional equal protection should apply to some nonhuman animals in light of corporations having gained such protection and concludes that expanding equal protection personhood to nonhuman animals is improbable in the present legal landscape.

Should Nonhuman Animals Be Recognized Legally as Persons?

This article explores the legal status of nonhuman animals used in biomedical research. While acknowledging that, presently, nonhuman animals in research settings hold no personal legal rights, this article explores what a legal person is and proposes that it is possible for nonhuman animals to become legal persons and receive better protections under the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Does It Make Sense to Say Humans "Protect" Nonhuman Animals While Using Them to Promote Human Health Interests?

Nonhuman animal research has contributed to human health advancements but raises questions about the extent to which humans protect nonhuman animals during such endeavors. This series of drawings explores several ethics and empirical questions from a visual point of view.

With What Should We Replace Nonhuman Animals in Biomedical Research Protocols?

Historically, most discussions about nonhuman animal experimentation consider what has become known as the 3 R's: refinement, reduction, and replacement. Refinement and reduction receive the most attention, but recent modeling advances suggest that suitable replacement of nonhuman animal testing would bolster human research and increase translatability to human health outcomes. This article discusses these modeling advances and advocates their use, especially as replacements to nonpredictive nonhuman animal protocols, and discusses growing momentum in biomedical research communities and federal agencies that favors replacement of animal testing.

How Should the 3 R's Be Revised and Why?

The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique established what many know today as the "3 R's"-refinement, reduction, and replacement-when it was published in 1959. Since their formulation, these principles have guided decision-making for many about nonhuman animal subjects' uses in laboratory-based research. Discussion about how to amend or replace the 3 R's is ongoing, driven mainly by philosophical ethics approaches to nonhuman animal rights and by scientific advancement. This article explores merits and drawbacks of possible updates to and interpretations of the 3 R's.

Thoughts and suggestions about ethical requirement in acupuncture animal experiments. / 针刺动物实验中的伦理要求思考及建议.

The animal experiment is an important form of acupuncture research, which is of great significance for revealing the regularities and mechanisms of acupuncture effects. The ethical principle of animal welfare is the important guarantee of animal rights and experimental scientificity in the process of research. Starting from the "3R principle" and "five welfare" rules, and the specific operation process of acupuncture animal experiments, we, in this paper, proposed the implementation methods of animal ethics in acupuncture experiments, including ethical execution before acupuncture experiments, and ethical requirements during the experimental stage (such as animal fixation method that meets the needling needs, selection of acupuncture apparatus, acupuncture manipulations, acupuncture stimulation intensity, and sampling of animal tissues). These proposed methods may provide some appropriate references for the guarantee of animal ethics in acupuncture research, and provide ideas for establishing a new paradigm of animal welfare ethics in acupuncture animal experiments, and finally promote the standardization and scientificity process of the implementation of animal welfare ethics in acupuncture animal experiments.

Beyond Anthropocentrism: The Moral and Strategic Philosophy behind Russell and Burch's 3Rs in Animal Experimentation.

The 3Rs framework in animal experimentation- "replace, reduce, refine" - has been alleged to be expressive of anthropocentrism, the view that only humans are directly morally relevant. After all, the 3Rs safeguard animal welfare only as far as given human research objectives permit, effectively prioritizing human use interests over animal interests. This article acknowledges this prioritization, but argues that the characterization as anthropocentric is inaccurate. In fact, the 3Rs prioritize research purposes even more strongly than an ethical anthropocentrist would. Drawing on the writings of Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) founder Charles W. Hume, who employed Russell and Burch, it is argued that the 3Rs originally arose from an animal-centered ethic which was however restricted by an organizational strategy aiming at the voluntary cooperation of animal researchers. Research purposes thus had to be accepted as given. While this explains why the 3Rs focus narrowly on humane method selection, not on encouraging animal-free question selection in the first place, it suggests that governments should (also) focus on the latter if they recognize animals as deserving protection for their own sake.

How Should Treatment of Animals Beyond the Lab Factor Into Institutional Review?

Discussions of nonhuman research ethics tend to focus on what we owe nonhuman research subjects in laboratory settings only. But humans make critical decisions about these animals outside the lab, too, during breeding, transportation, and end-of-study protocols. This article reviews extra-lab risks and harms to nonhuman research subjects, focusing on the most commonly and intensively used animals like rodents and fishes, and argues that extra-lab risks and harms merit ethical consideration by researchers and institutional review.