Minutes of the meeting held on 20 December 2004
Mon, 9 May 2005
RIA 12th meeting
NUFFIELD COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS
WORKING PARTY ON THE ETHICS OF RESEARCH INVOLVING ANIMALS
Minutes of the meeting held at the Nuffield Foundation
28 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3JS
on Monday 20 December 2004
PRESENT:
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Chair)
Professor Allan Bradley FRS
Professor Steve Brown
Professor Kenneth Boyd
Professor Grahame Bulfield CBE
Professor Robert Combes
Professor Ian McConnell
Professor Maggy Jennings
Professor Barry Keverne FRS
Dr Judy MacArthur Clark CBE
Dr Mark Matfield
Dr Timothy Morris
Professor Martin Raff FRS
Mr Nick Ross
Professor John Spencer
Ms Michelle Thew
Professor Jonathan Wolff
APOLOGIES:
Dr Lewis Smith
SECRETARIAT:
Dr Sandy Thomas, Mr Harald Schmidt, Ms Caroline Rogers, Mrs Elaine Talaat-Abdalla
INTRODUCTION BY THE CHAIR
1 The Chair welcomed the members of the Working Party and outlined the schedule for the meeting. In the morning, the discussion would focus on the draft conclusions and recommendations in Chapter 14. In the afternoon, Chapter 13 and some procedural issues would be considered.
MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING
2 The minutes were approved.
MATTERS ARISING
Procedural issues
3 Over the Christmas period, the Secretariat would make final revisions to Chapter 14 in light of the discussion at the meeting. The revised full draft Report would be sent to the Council and the Working Party in mid-January. The comments by the Council would be sent to the Working Party by email and a procedure for agreeing the final version of the Report would be established in late January.
4 A description would be added in the Report which made the relationship between the Working Party and the Council clear to the reader. The final Report would be a Report by the Council. Members of the Working Party were not co-authors of the Report in the sense that they would all agree on every aspect of content or style. Rather their contribution was to help present the many different views about research involving animals. While members clearly differed as to whether the views of others were indeed justified, they agreed with the way in which these views were presented. Also, all members agreed with the content of the consensus statement, and the conclusions and recommendations which would be included in bold font in the final Report.
DRAFT REPORT
Chapter 14
5 The Chair thanked members for their contributions by email which led to the most recent version of Chapter 14. Member then revised the conclusion and recommendations of the Chapter up to paragraph 14.94 (discussion about setting targets) and agreed a final version, which was produced by making revisions on the data projector. Revisions were made in particular to the discussion about the need for openness, the publishing of licence applications, and the provision of statistical information by the Home Office (paragraphs 14.31ff); the role of the ERP (paragraph 14.31, notes after paragraph 14.73); the importance of consideration of the full life time experiences of research animals (paragraph 14.32, 14.75); the discussion about activities of militant extremists (paragraph 14.39ff); responsibilities of the DfES (paragraph 14.45); and whistleblowing (paragraph 14.70). There was no agreement on how to revise the discussion about the setting of targets. It was agreed that that the Secretariat would review the section in light of the comments made during the meeting and that the Council should be invited to consider in particular whether the outline of arguments in favour and against the setting of targets should remain in the Chapter. Michelle Thew would contribute drafting relating to the international situation concerning the use of the LD50. A detailed list of problems concerning the A(SP)A had been contributed by Dr Maggy Jennings. It was agreed that matters of fact raised in this section should be included in Chapter 12. There was not sufficient time to discuss Chapter 13, but members were invited to send further comments on this Chapter to the Secretariat.
Launch
6 The Director outlined ways in which previous Reports of the Council had been launched. In the case of the Genetics and Human Behaviour: the ethical context a large public event with approximately 150 participants had been arranged at Senate House. Members of the Working Party had given brief presentations on important sections of the Report, which was followed by a discussion/question and answer session. Several member observed that in view of the emphasis which the report of the present Working Party placed on openness it would be desirable to arrange a similar event. The Secretariat would explore the options and also seek the views of the Council on how to launch the Report.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
7 There was none.
Last Updated Mon, 9 May 2005