The ethics of animal research: a survey of pediatric health care workers

Introduction

Pediatric health care workers (HCW) often perform, promote, and advocate use of public funds for animal research (AR). We aim to determine whether HCW consider common arguments (and counterarguments) in support (or not) of AR convincing.

Design

After development and validation, an e-mail survey was sent to all pediatricians and pediatric intensive care unit nurses and respiratory therapists (RTs) affiliated with a Canadian University. We presented questions about demographics, support for AR, and common arguments (with their counterarguments) to justify the moral permissibility (or not) of AR. Responses are reported using standard tabulations. Responses of pediatricians and nurses/RTs were compared using Chi-square, with P?<?.05 considered significant.

Results

Response rate was 53/115(46%) (pediatricians), and 73/120(61%) (nurses/RTs). Pediatricians and nurses/RTs are supportive of AR. Most considered ‘benefits arguments’ sufficient to justify AR; however, most acknowledged that counterarguments suggesting alternative research methods may be available, or that it is unclear why the same ‘benefits arguments’ do not apply to using humans in research, significantly weakened ‘benefits arguments’. Almost all were not convinced of the moral permissibility of AR by ‘characteristics of non-human-animals arguments’, including that non-human-animals may not be sentient, or are simply property. Most were not convinced of the moral permissibility of AR by ‘human exceptionalism’ arguments, including that humans have more advanced mental abilities, are of a special ‘kind’, can enter into social contracts, or face a ‘lifeboat situation’. Counterarguments explained much of this, including that not all humans have these more advanced abilities [the argument from species overlap], and that the notion of ‘kind’ is arbitrary [e.g., why are we not of the kind ‘sentient animal’ or ‘subject-of-a-life’]. Pediatrician and nurse/RT responses were similar.

Conclusions

Most respondents were not convinced of the moral permissibility of AR when given common arguments and counterarguments from the literature. HCW should seriously consider arguments on both sides of the AR debate.

     

Framing Posthumous Organ Donation in Terms of Reciprocity: What Are the Emotional Consequences?

Posthumous organ donation was framed in terms of reciprocity by asking young participants to respond to another person who was or was not registered as an organ donor, while simultaneously manipulating participants' own registration status. Participants were additionally required to adopt the perspective of a potential donor or recipient of organs. The influence of these variables on self-reported anger, fear, pity, guilt, gratitude, and positive self-feelings is systematically described. The results illustrate the relative independence of self-preservational and altruistic motives in organ donation. Practical implications are discussed.     

Response expectancy versus response hope in predicting birth‐related emotional distress and pain

Response expectancies and response hopes have been shown to be two distinct constructs with important implications for nonvolitional outcomes. More specifically, studies show that response expectancies: (1) are sufficient to cause nonvolitional outcomes, (2) are not mediated by other psychological variables, and (3) are self‐confirming while seemingly automatic. A new programmatic research line has differentiated between people's response expectancies and their response hopes regarding nonvolitional outcomes and showed that even if response hope and response expectancy are separate constructs, they are not unrelated. These concepts have not yet been studied in pregnant women. Moreover, determining the causal factors that best explain the variance of emotional distress and pain in pregnancy is of great importance. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the interrelations between response expectancy and response hope in pregnant women with respect to (1) emotional distress prior to giving birth and (2) pain during giving birth. Additionally, self‐reported labor hours were analyzed as a secondary outcome. Results show that response expectancy for pain directly predicts pain, and that the discrepancy between response hopes and response expectancies is a strong predictor of investigated outcomes. Thus, our results support the idea that preventive psychological interventions for pregnant women should emphasize adjusting response expectancies and response hopes regarding the pain and emotional distress associated with giving birth. We believe that the results have both theoretical and practical implications and the topic deserves further investigation.     

Counterfactual closeness and predicted affect

Empirical research on counterfactual thinking has found a closeness effect: people report higher negative affect if an actual outcome is close to a better counterfactual outcome. However, it remains unclear what actually is a “close” miss. In three experiments that manipulate close counterfactuals, closeness effects were found only when closeness was unambiguously defined either with respect to a contrasted alternative, or with respect to a categorical boundary. In a real task people failed to report greater negative affect when encountering a close numerical miss, while they predicted greater negative affect hypothetically. These results show that counterfactual closeness effects on affect depend on closeness being accessible and unambiguously defined.     

Stigmatization,Repair, or Undesirable Side Effect of Tolerance? Being Clear About What We Study and Target for Intervention

The terms prejudice and stigmatization tend to be overused and incorrectly applied to normal social control processes and to certain negative side effects of social tolerance. The author proposes that the evolutionary origins of social control stem from the need to repair disturbed relationships in a small group of kin-related individuals without engaging in stigmatization. This perspective results in a comprehensive classification of deviant conditions and their motivational implications. Dependent on type of deviance, situation, and culture, activation of the psychological mechanisms involved in repair may also result in stigmatization or tolerance. Practical implications for stigma prevention and reduction are discussed.     

Group therapy: The Elgin plan

Pastoral Psychology -