Statement of Institutional Research Ethics at CSU
Bernard Rollin, University Bioethicist
Any group of persons, united in a group for common purpose, be it in society or in a university, must operate by a consensus set of rules governing what is seen as right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair, just and unjust. Without such rules, one could not have a unified collective entity, and efforts towards achieving a common goal would degenerate into chaos and anarchy, since any human activity faces myriad ethical challenges.
Research and scholarly activity conducted at an institution for the accretion of knowledge and the benefit of society falls four square under the rubric just described. We at CSU are committed to maximizing the ethical dimensions of what research and scholarship we conduct, as well as the scientific dimensions. Yet the history of scientific research is sadly marked by cavalier violations of moral principles that would be unreservedly affirmed by most members of society in general.
Meticulous historical documentation for example vividly illustrates the thesis that there was almost certainly no time during the past century that humans were not egregiously experimented on without consent and often without their knowledge and to their detriment. One immediately recalls flagship instances such as the Tuskegee syphilis studies; Willowbrook; the cavalier use of young, vulnerable children in institutions allegedly designed to care for them; medical experiments done without consent, such as the injection of live cancer cells into cancer patients; the Stanford prisoner experiments; experiments on vulnerable soldiers and prisoners; the infamous Nazi experiments.
If human subjects were so cavalierly ill-used, one can anticipate that animal subjects were even more cavalierly ill-used. The virtually complete absence of a literature on animal analgesia before the late 1980s; the multiple use of animals in unrelated surgical procedures for surgical instruction; the maternal deprivation and learned helplessness studies systematically performed on animals; the use of curariform paralytics in the absence of anesthetics; the killing of animals by paralyzing the respiration muscles; the carrying out of disease studies to an endpoint of death; the permitting of tumors to grow to great size; all provide unforgettable examples buttressing our claim.
To be sure, many of these examples have been eliminated or much reduced by societal indignation expressed in legislation and regulation. However, to wait for societal action is to risk the loss of scientific autonomy. Thus, as the eighteenth century might have phrased it, scientific research must become a moral science, with pondering the ethics of what one is doing as weighty a consideration as why and how one is doing it.
For these reasons, we at CSU are committed to maximizing the ethical dimensions of what research and scholarship we conduct, as well as the scientific dimensions. The ethical rules and procedures governing animal research, embodied in US federal law, were first crafted and implemented at CSU, earning us an enviable reputation we are committed to keeping, and have spread into most countries doing animal research. In the area of research on human beings, we do not encounter some of the life and death ethical issues one encounters in medical schools, but we are nonetheless aware that subjects can be abused and harmed in many ways and in many areas and are pledged to maximizing respect for subject rights and welfare.
Similarly, we recognize our obligations to the university and local community, and to the environment, and thus take the moral obligations of working with pathogens, toxins, and radioactive material with the utmost seriousness and expect this attitude to be shared by anyone participating in that sort of work.
Finally, the very existence of science and scholarship depends on honesty in the gathering, reporting, and claiming of authorship of research results. Absent “scientific integrity”, the entire scientific and scholarly enterprise must collapse.
We have little tolerance for the sometimes-heard lament from researchers who come from other institutions to the effect that “at U of X I did the same protocol with no problems from the human, animal, or biosafety committees.” That may well be true, but it is also irrelevant. Different institutions have different cultures and, at CSU, we are committed to the highest moral standards in any research and scholarship we undertake.
There is a practical as well as a moral justification for doing the right thing. As is the case with all professions, science is charged with regulating itself, external regulation being recognized as inimical to free inquiry. However, this is a privilege that exists at the sufferance of society. Witness the fate of the accounting profession when it failed to honor public trust. In addition, by taking the high road as we have done in animal research, we avoid the public distrust manifested in picketing, threats, and destructive publicity.
If any person at CSU has any interest in exploring any ethical issue related to any aspect of research, he or she feel free to contact the university bioethicist, who is pledged to maintain strict confidentiality and is happy to discuss any such issue.