Ethics and zebrafish
Dr Don Love and his Auckland University team use zebrafish to study heritable human diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Huntington's disease, and inflammatory bowel disease. Like any research involving animals, their work is subject to strict ethical scrutiny.
Animal models
In order to use zebrafish to help us better understand certain human diseases, the zebrafish need to be ‘given’ the diseases. They then become animal ‘models’ of the human disease.
The ethics of fish mutations
What do scientists need to do in order to obtain ethical approval for research involving animals. Which animals does this apply to?
As with any work involving the manipulation of animals, much care is taken to ensure that the work follows ethical principles. This is a requirement under the Animal Welfare Act 1999.
Ethics committees
In order to get ethical approval to undertake an experiment involving animals, a thorough application must be approved by a formal ethics committee. It is important that a range of perspectives are represented on this panel.
Ethics committees
Scientists aren't free to do whatever they like. All research involving animals requires ethical approval. The committees set up to give or deny such approval include members from the RSPCA, the Vet Association, and other lay members.
Is the research really needed?
To justify an experiment using animals, the value of the outcomes of the research must be judged to be greater than the suffering imposed on the animals, and due consideration must be given to minimising any unavoidable suffering.
Is animal research needed?
Why do scientists like Dr Love sometimes need to use animals in their research? Dr Don Love from Auckland University is investigating diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Here, he explains why he uses zebrafish in his research.
In the case of Dr Love and his zebrafish, the wellbeing of the fish is carefully monitored and humanely dealt with. Because the work is of biological value, and has the potential to lead to treatments for currently incurable diseases, it has been deemed to be acceptable and to date has been granted ethical approval.
However, an application for ethical approval for an experiment must consider how much the animals in the experiment are expected to suffer. This is estimated against a standardised scale of degrees of suffering.
Welfare of research animals
Auckland University's Dr Love explains why research animals are well cared for.
Zebrafish make a difference
Read the article Zebrafish make a difference to find out more about Dr Love’s work with zebrafish, and how useful these fish are anyway – they’re very different from humans, after all!
Dr Love’s zebrafish
Join Year 13 Biology students from Wellington, Stratford and Taipa as they ask Dr Love about some of the DNA techniques used in his laboratory, and why the future represents a ‘new dawn’ in biological research.
Watch the videos in this video conference: Dr Love’s zebrafish.
Related content
Māori concepts for animal ethics – introduction curates a suite of resources that explore animal ethics with a kaupapa Māori approach. It includes the article The Three Rs of animal ethics.
Useful link
In this Guardian article, New Zealand scientists question whether fish feel pain during medical and scientific experiments, and the implications for animal ethics. Zebra fish are of particular interest.
