Ethical or Not: A Case of Personal and Agency Guidelines

At one time or another, all scientific researchers who use human and non-human animals as subjects must face the dilemma of whether or not to conduct the study. Evaluation of ethical practices involving the use of animals in scientific research is typically viewed from the perspective of established guidelines generated by scientific governing organizations. However, in the end it is the researcher who must live with what he/she has done, be it good or bad. Thus, there is another set of ethical principles carried into each research situation – that of the investigator. This paper presents a decision-making model, which integrates the ethical guidelines of the researcher with those of the scientific governing organization, for determining whether or not to perform a study using human and non-human species. Considerable attention has been focused on the issue of ethics in research through guidelines that have been generated by governing agencies such as Sigma Xi (1992), America