Scientific autonomy and the 3Rs.

In order to appreciate fully the great impact of Osborne and colleagues’ (2009) article, one must recall the logic of professional ethics. Society in essence tasks professionals, including scientists, with the following directive: “You comport yourselves ethically the way we would expect you to if we fully understood what you do, which we don’t, but we will know if you fail to do so, and regulate you in a draconian way, our lack of comprehension notwithstanding”. Examples of this logic abound. When Congress first became concerned about excessive use of antibiotics as growth promotants in animal feeds, it discovered veterinarians to be a major source of these drugs, and seriously considered suspending veterinarians’ ability to prescribe drugs in an extra-label fashion. Since most veterinary drugs are in fact human drugs used off-label, such a policy would have paralyzed veterinary medicine. Similarly, one may recall the strict regulation and correlative loss of autonomy for the accounting profession in the wake of the Enron scandal. Failure on the part of a profession to adhere to socioethical expectations results in loss of freedom, a very undesirable consequence. Few areas of scientific activity were as historically violative of social trust as the use of animals in research. The original Animal Welfare Act of 1966 emerged as a response to reports of companion animals being stolen by unscrupulous dealers and sold to research, and by appalling treatment of these animals when in the hands of these dealers.