Federal animals should receive at research facilities

Federal LawIn 1966, the United States established the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) to address the standard of care all animals should receive at research facilities (source).

This law set the minimum standards for housing, feeding, handling, and — in the case of most non-human primates — psychological well being (source). As long as research facilities abide by the guidelines set by the AWA, medical testing is legal. In addition, the Animal Welfare Act is enforced by other federal committees such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to ensure the ____ and fair treatment of animals during testing. All research institutions, under the ___ of the AWA, are required to establish an IACUC at their facility “ to oversee and evaluate all aspects of the institution’s animal care and use program” (source). Every IACUC at each research facility reviews research protocols and conducts evaluations on the institution’s animal care and use (source).

The extra step taken by federal ____ to ensure the safety and protection of animal test subjects strengthens the power in the Animal Welfare Act, and further proves the legality of animal testing for medicine. In juxtaposition, Professor of Animal Ethics and Welfare at the Western Carolina University Dr. Hal Herzog found that the IACUC is a self regulating institution meaning that it is often victim to bribery, bias, and unlawful behaviour in order to cover incriminating behaviour (Herzog). In his time recording and transcribing 87 protocol IACUC discussions, he found that factors such as the gender of the reviewer, personal opinion on the study, and the presence or absence of prior review of the study play into the score report by an IACUC beyond what federal regulation mandates (Herzog). These findings by Dr. Herzog prove that inspection scores by the IACUC and regulating bodies are largely manipulated by ____ to hide unlawful testing environments, therefore making _______ illegal.

Additionally, research centers often override legal requirements by claiming “ Scientific Necessity” (Locke). One such example is budget-weary research facilities not providing animals with painkillers during surgical procedures as mandated by the AWA (source). As a result, the Animal Legal Defense Fund found that over 92% of experiments that don’t provide painkillers under the claim of “ Scientific Necessity” are ______, (source) therefore, violating the AWA and making animal testing under such circumstances illegal. In summary, Nuremberg CodeIn 1945, a series of post-war trials were being conducted in Nuremberg, Germany to those who had committed major Nazi war crimes. Those executed during the trials included a number of physicians who used concentration camp prisoners as test subjects for their _____ experiments, treating human beings as “ less than beasts” (Taylor). As a result, the Nuremberg Code, a set of ethical standards for human experimentation, was created. Soon after, the United States adopted these standards, and implemented them into administrative law — the U.

S. Code of Federal Regulations (Shuster). However, when the U. S.

adopted these standards, they broadened it to all members of the Hominidae or Great Ape Species, including chimpanzees, orangutans, and other large-brained primates (Shuster). The next section of this paper will evaluate the legality of non-human primate testing in regards to the Nuremberg Code.