If you go to the primate center here on campus and ask for a tour of the center, they will say, “just a minute” and then call the police on you.

THAT is speciesism. Furthermore, it may not be true; there are all sorts of ways it could prove wrong.

Another category for which informed consent cannot often be obtained is for trials of new treatments in emergancy medicine, where the nature of the injury (for example stroke or head injury) itself renders the patient incapable of giving their consent. In such cases where there is a short window of opportunity for starting the therapy consent can be waived (subject to IRB approval) if it is not possible to contact a proxy to give consent in time. Needless to say these trials do often involve invasive procedures and risk to the patient.

Interestingly an IOM panel recently published a report on the ethics of research on prisoners, a population whose restricted liberty raised profound ethical questions with regard to informed consent http://iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2006/Ethical-Considerations-for-Research-Involving-Prisoners/Prisoners.pdf

It does strike me that Franz De Waals views on what is acceptable in research involving chimpanzees is somewhat blinkered, overly focused on his own field. He might consider “cognitive testing, trained giving of (small) blood samples, behavioral observation, and voluntary neuroimaging.” to be tha procedures that he “would not mind doing on human volunteers”, but he must acknowledge that there are thousands of clinical scientists who need to do far more invasive and risky procedures on human volunteers, and even in some situations on humans who cannot volunteer. While I fully agree that chimpanzees should be the animal model of last resort – as the IOM panel rcommended in its guidelines – Franz de Waal appears to suggest that Chimpanzees receive a greater degree of protection than some human subjects. He’s also far too optimistic about the potential for voluntary neuroimaging in chimps, stating that it is “likely to be developed in the near future”. This just isn’t true, and for the next decade – at the very least – some degree of sedation and/or restraint will still be required in order to conduct neuroimaging studies in apes.

There’s also the issue of the testing of vaccines for diseases such as Ebola virus which are devestating wild great ape populations. Such vaccines are increasingly considered necessary to ensure the survival of several great ape species in the wild, and will need to be evaluated for safety and immunogenicity in chimpanzees (having demonstrated the ability to block infection in other animal models) before being trialed in wild populations. Clearly a vloanke ban in all invasive research in chimpanzees would not be a good idea at this stage.

If that distinction was such a bright line, one would not need IRBs (Institutional Review Boards). All you would need is a contract that could be signed by an individual to deliver his or her consent.

Nevertheless, we know that there are many ways consent may not be particularly voluntary and/or that the decision-making process happened in an uncorrupted manner.

First is the issue of compensation. Human subjects could well, as a function of their personal finances, accept involvement in an experiment that causes them deep distress due to the monetary reward.

Second, individuals may agree to participate in an experiment because they want to please their doctor who recommends it, or a family member.

And perhaps most importantly, people with cognitive or other mental problems may find it virtually impossible to make a reasoned decision about whether to involve themselves in research – that is the nature of their disease and is the reason scientists need to study them!

In all cases of human research, an IRB examines the proposed research with an eye for issues like this. It makes a decision ON BEHALF of the subject as to whether the research should be allowed to proceed, or not.

In ethical decision-making, we often use by-proxy review to assist the system. It is no different with animal research.

Institutional animal care and use committees serve nearly the identical role to the IRB. It questions, on behalf of the subjects and of science, whether the protocol is meritorious and is being conducted in manner consistent with our ethical principles.

In human and animal research alike, we rely upon individuals of good-will and expertise (both in and outside of the scientific community) to offer their insights into a process where voluntary consent is rarely clear and is never quite the bright line standard some lead us to believe.