Response

We are grateful to the Veterinary Consortium for Research Animal Care and Welfare (VCRACW) for engaging so thoughtfully with our essay,¹ and to the editors for the opportunity to respond alongside the VCRACW letter. We are grateful, too, for the editorial by Suckow and Myers² that followed our original piece,³ which helped frame this conversation. That this exchange is happening at all is, to us, the most encouraging outcome of the original piece. We called for open dialogue grounded in evidence, trust, and mutual respect, and this is precisely what that looks like. We welcome it.

It is worth naming how much common ground this exchange revealed. The VCRACW letter agrees that unnecessary delay, vague terminology, inconsistent standards, and poor communication can erode trust between veterinarians and researchers, and that these issues “warrant serious attention.” It proposes shared definitions, evidence-based welfare metrics, clarified institutional roles, and earlier communication as the remedy. These were our recommendations as well. Suckow and Myers, for their part, caution against “rigid proceduralism detached from scientific purpose” and describe oversight at its best as “complementary rather than adversarial.” Across all these pieces the convergence is striking: the path forward runs through shared, evidence-based frameworks and stronger communication, not division. On this, we could not agree more.

We also want to address the term that gave understandable offense. Our use of “moral gatekeeper” was never intended to characterize the motives or competence of individual veterinarians, whom we called “indispensable” partners and “committed champions of science.” It was meant to name a structural risk: that institutional risk aversion, expanding regulation, and a charged cultural climate can recast a role built on clinical judgment and scientific partnership into one of enforcement, elevating process over outcome. This is not a hypothetical concern. Both researchers and veterinarians have observed institutions restructure these roles in ways that introduce new power differentials—placing veterinarians within units explicitly designated “compliance” rather than “veterinary services” or “research animal resources,” for example. There is, moreover, wide variation across institutions, individuals, and perhaps generations, and that variation matters: it reveals gaps in policy that permit markedly different interpretations of the same regulatory requirements. Where regulatory function is allowed to supersede clinical judgment and scientific partnership, the result can be an adversarial culture in which researchers are inhibited from raising legitimate concerns—a chilling effect that should worry anyone committed to genuine collaboration. That these are systemic pressures rather than personal failings is, we believe, consistent with Suckow and Myers’ own warning against proceduralism untethered from scientific purpose. We named the structural risk precisely because it operates independently of the good intentions of the individuals caught within it. If the phrase read as an indictment of the profession, that was not our intent; the profession is exactly the partner we are calling on.

One point of genuine substance deserves direct engagement. The VCRACW letter states that veterinary welfare decisions are “not grounded in philosophical considerations” but are purely clinical, practical, and welfare-based. We would gently suggest that this understates the profession’s own contribution. Determining whether a burden is justified, where a humane endpoint lies, or how to weigh distress against scientific value draws not only on clinical observation but on evaluative judgment—the very judgment Suckow and Myers describe, in their preceding editorial, as “ethical deliberation grounded in expertise” and as a form of stewardship, observing that while regulatory frameworks provide structure, “professional judgment provides meaning.” Recognizing that welfare assessment carries an irreducible normative dimension is not a criticism of veterinarians; it is a description of what makes their role so consequential. It is also precisely why shared, transparent, evidence-based definitions matter. Where judgments rest partly on values, making those values explicit is what allows veterinarians and scientists to reason together rather than past one another.

It bears emphasizing, too, that the frameworks governing animal welfare are not fixed; they develop alongside the science. Consideration of 2 disciplines—ethology and comparative psychology—that provide over 100 years of empirical and theoretically driven research offer clear illustrations.⁴ As the systematic study of animal behavior and psychologic processes advanced—documenting species-typical behavioral repertoires, the behavioral effects of confinement, and capacities for distress and well-being that earlier eras had not measured—our standards moved with it. The clearest case is the provision for the psychologic well-being of nonhuman primates (NHPs), added to the Animal Welfare Act by the 1985 Improved Standards for Laboratory Animals Act and implemented in the 1991 final rule that still governs today.⁵ That requirement did not descend on a reluctant science; it grew out of empirical psychologic and behavioral studies on NHP sociality, foraging, and the consequences of different environments and housing, and the standards were developed by and in consultation with comparative psychologists and NHP behavior experts to direct enrichment plans that rest on an understanding of each species’ natural history and traits.^5,6 Each advance in understanding what animals are and what they need reshaped what we considered humane, which in turn directed further inquiry. This is the relationship in microcosm: ethical standards and scientific knowledge advancing together, each informing and correcting the other. Neither veterinarians nor researchers move that frontier alone. We need each other precisely because the questions—what constitutes adequate welfare, where a humane endpoint lies, what enrichment a species requires—are answered jointly, by clinical, psychologic, and behavioral expertise in conversation, and the answers keep changing as we learn more. The range of knowledge and expertise that bears on these questions is wide, and much of it is deep. The study of animal behavior and psychologic well-being is itself a mature scientific discipline, with more than a century of empirical and theoretical work behind it; environmental enrichment alone traces back to Hebb’s foundational work in the 1940s.⁷ A familiarity with that literature is not interchangeable with expertise in it, any more than a few courses in surgery confer the standing to operate. Many of the ineffective practices that recur in welfare assessment reflect not bad faith but distance from the relevant empirical and theoretical knowledge—and the remedy is not deference to credentials but engagement with evidence. This is what an ethics of expertise asks of all of us: that authority follow knowledge rather than title. Practicing intellectual humility and genuine respect for different forms of expertise, acknowledging the gaps in our own understanding, and remaining open to learning are all far more productive than arbitrating differences based on educational degree or professional title.

A further point of regulatory framing merits clarification. Both the Suckow-Myers editorial and the VCRACW letter reach for the language of ethics in describing these roles—the editorial characterizes oversight committees as providing “structured ethical review,” and the letter invokes “ethical stewardship.” Accreditation guidance speaks the same way: AAALAC expects that an institution’s program of veterinary care “will uphold high standards of care and ethics.”⁸ We share these aspirations. It is noteworthy, however, that the governing statute and regulations charge veterinarians and IACUCs somewhat more narrowly. The Animal Welfare Act and its implementing regulations task the attending veterinarian and the committee with ensuring that procedures comply with defined welfare standards—minimizing pain and distress, requiring genuine consideration of alternatives to painful procedures, and providing adequate veterinary care.^9–11 PHS policy frames the committee’s review criteria in the same compliance-and-welfare terms.¹² The normative judgment we describe is not a separate ethical mandate layered onto these duties; it is intrinsic to carrying them out, since determining what ‘minimizes’ distress or what counts as an acceptable alternative cannot be done without evaluative reasoning. Indeed, the Animal Welfare Act regulations are explicit that “nothing in this part shall be deemed to permit the Committee or IACUC to prescribe methods or set standards for the design, performance, or conduct of actual research.”^9,10AAALAC itself frames the point in just this register, directing that the veterinarian “interact collaboratively with the research team … when making critical decisions regarding animal health and welfare.”⁸ But neither the Act nor its implementing regulations, nor the PHS policy that complements them, assign the veterinarian or the IACUC a mandate of ethical adjudication as such. We note this not to diminish the role but to describe it precisely: the widely used language of ‘ethical review,’ however well intentioned, names a function the governing laws and regulations do not themselves assign, even as the professional and accreditation literature rightly commends it. The distinction is worth preserving, if only so that the boundary between regulatory compliance and the considered professional judgment that surrounds it remains visible to everyone who relies on it. Furthermore, to the extent that institutions, individuals, and organizations expand and change the roles of the laboratory animal clinicians and IACUCs they are—at some level—subverting the intent of federal laws and standards and doing so outside the recognized venues for public rule-making.

This is why we remain convinced that the answer is more partnership, not less, and why we extend a direct invitation. The International Primate Vet-PI Neuroscience Alliance (IPVNA) was founded in exactly the spirit this exchange embodies: scientists, veterinarians, trainees, and technicians working together toward shared frameworks that serve both rigorous science and high standards of animal welfare. We warmly invite the members of the VCRACW, and the colleagues and societies they represent, to join us in that effort. The consensus already visible across these 3 pieces—on metrics, definitions, role clarity, and communication—is a foundation worth building on together.

Veterinarians are not outside science; they are central to it. So is honest dialogue about the difficult, sometimes value-laden judgments that humane research requires. We thank our colleagues for advancing that conversation, and we look forward to continuing it, as partners.

Michele A Basso, PhD*

Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Sangeeta Panicker, PhD

Silver Spring, Maryland

Ginger Tansey, DVM, CPSTI

Veterinary Research and Resources Section, National Eye Institute, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda, Maryland

Sébastien Tremblay, PhD

CERVO Brain Research Center, Université Laval, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Andrew Winterborn, BSc, DVM, DACLAM

University Veterinarian, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

*Corresponding author. Email: mbasso@uw.edu