FEB 04, 2015 12:00 PM PST

Standards and regulations for animal use in research: challenges and changes in a chilean university

C.E. Credits: CE
Speaker

Abstract

In Chile, the regulatory context regarding animal use in research is very poor. A legal framework for Animal Care and Use Committees is practically nonexistent. Also, the chilean culture plays against the implementation of standards, usually chileans do not care about the implementation of regulations that are not being requested or audited by any authority. Only in 2005 the main governmental funding agency, Fondecyt, established an advisory board to oversight ethics protocols of the funded proposals and started to request that every grant application must have ethical review from a Research Ethics Committee, IRB or IACUC. But in Chile at that time there were not resources, instances or experienced people to help Research Ethics Committee members or researchers in the understanding of this new requirement. In the last seven years, this "landscape" started to change. Many Institutions started with the implementation of Research Ethics Committees and some of them started to really take care of the ethical elements to consider in reviewing a protocol. Only few of them have reached relatively good standards at their animal facilities and have hired trained personnel to manage and handle animals. However all these good news were due to particular and specific people that became aware and began to work hard in the implementation of good practices. On their own initiative, they began learning and looking for international experiences, in order to responsibly implement practices at their home institution. During this seminar I will present the major challenges and changes that these particular persons had to face in order to get support and resources to install good practices. This example might be helpful for other institutions because of the tools and strategies used to convince the authorities and get resources, and to sensitize researchers and make them understand the benefits of having an animal program and IACUC´s guidance.


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FEB 04, 2015 12:00 PM PST

Standards and regulations for animal use in research: challenges and changes in a chilean university

C.E. Credits: CE


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