The Key Role of Ethics Committees: Giving a Voice to Animals Impacted by Human Actions

What would you do as a vet, if someone came to you to euthanize their animal because they were moving house?  Pretty easy, right? Tell them to get stuffed. 

What if their newly adopted dog attacked a child, putting it in hospital with severe life-changing injuries, and they wanted to return the dog?  Not so simple this time.  Do you also have a duty to the safety of others and to children if this dog was to be re-adopted, and are you 100% sure there would be no further risks? 

What if you attended to a large, wild ungulate, a quadriplegic from trauma with no hope of walking again let alone return to the wild, or there is an animal that is suffering from a painful, untreatable and ultimately fatal disease and the laws of the country prohibit euthanasia? 

I have been faced with all of these dilemmas and much more.  It’s the nature of my work, being a vet.  And this brings me to this point: when dealing in matters that impact upon the health & wellbeing of animals (i.e. the ‘ethics’), it is best to have a system already set in place, then to knee-jerk react to every ethical curveball that comes your way.

This paralysed puppy was infected with rat lungworm, through eating snails.  Ironically the worst thing to do is treat the lungworm infection at this stage, as the body's inflammatory response to the larval die-off can be catastrophic.  Fortunately, this puppy was diagnosed correctly and went on to live a normal, 4-legged life.

But what if you were in India, dealing with a 500-pound adult wild nilgai bull with a broken leg and 100% guarantee of a prolonged, painful death, and euthanasia was against the law?  Sometimes there are no easy answers... 

This is the primary purpose of Ethics Committees:  When an animal might be negatively impacted by human actions, the ethics committee gives that animal a voice at the table.  The outcomes and decisions of the committee are then binding and serve as guard rails and conditional steps that must be taken, in order to minimise any negative impacts that the animal may experience.

Ethics committees also go beyond the hospital.  I snapped this pic of a baby koala attached to it's momma, who is sleeping under sedation.  For the sake of the island forest and the koalas themselves (who were going to starve because they were eating what little remained of the trees), an ethics committee approved catching the mothers, bringing them to a field station, sedating them, implanting birth control (like a big microchip) and releasing them back.  Yes this negatively impacted their welfare in the short term.  But this work only needed to be done once per koala and the forests grew back.  Long term the animals went on to live happy, normal lives. 

I have served on 2 ethics committees, in quite different aspects of animal health:

• As a founding member on the world’s first ethics committee for a veterinary hospital (the Lort Smith Animal Hospital in Melbourne, Australia). Given that prior to this point there had been no animal hospital ethics committees to our knowledge, we had no idea where to even start! 

What we did know, was that certain recurring themes were hurting the animals that we were trying to help - and impacting on the mental health of staff who felt forced to be a part of something that they did not agree with but in their eyes were legally bound to (e.g. euthanasia out of inconvenience).  The morale of staff was waning. 

Cute right? Bulldogs have lovely personalities and their flat faces resemble that of a human baby, making them all the more endearing to us humans.  However, extreme brachycephalic breeds like this young pup present an ethical dilemma to vets for several reasons because of the many severe body malformations that have been bred into them (resulting in breathing, skin, ear, eye, and spinal problems).  But did you know that almost 9 out of TEN bulldog pregnancies are born by caesarian section? We have created a situation where the breed literally cannot give birth naturally.  It is heart-wrenching for vets and nurses to have to perform a caesarian on a mother who is caught in this distressing breeders cycle - especially in a charity situation where many owners know they do not have to pay for it.  One solution: Yes we will perform the surgery (for free/highly discounted), but if you are unable to pay full price, you agree to have your dog spayed at the time of surgery. 

At this hospital this was a win-win for both animal welfare advocates and for the dogs.       

To get around the problem of not knowing what we were doing, we brought in the head of the local children’s hospital ethics committee, as part of our founding committee.  Why?  Children have a lot of parallels to animals: when things are happening to them, they too can be vulnerable and voiceless.  For example, what do you do if a child’s parents refuse a life-saving blood transfusion because it is against their religious beliefs?  Religious freedom is a tricky area (especially nowadays), but who will speak for the child?

We prioritised our efforts to first address the most pressing ethical dilemmas and challenges of the hospital.  The procedures & protocols we put in place to deal with these resulted in a real morale boost for the staff, as they felt like they would now no longer be left alone with the heavy decisions – and potentially legal consequences - of their professional and moral actions.  The hospital had their back, it was not only there for the clients/owners but first and foremost for the animals. 

The decision by our CEO to take this pioneering step was a real win and a testament to the idea to think beyond the mentality trap of ‘this is how things are done because this is how things have been done”.  It was about the idea that we can do better, and we did.

• The 2^nd ethics committee I sat on was a round table on wild animal research that was occurring in the state.  For committees you have to have a ‘quorum’, or minimum number of members that represented the involved stakeholders. 

It is best that the people who form the quorum are knowledgeable in their area but also that there are varied viewpoints.  A diversity of thoughtful opinion is key.  A committee usually consists of a chair (the one to hold the meetings), a scientist/researcher, a veterinarian, an animal welfare advocate and a member of public/observer who can bring a non-scientific or layman’s point-of-view.  These committees must operate on a respectful, professional level because as is in all cases in life, nothing gets done if relationships are bad.

The issues we had to contend with were often complicated and required honest and difficult conversations.  How do you balance the welfare needs of Australian wildlife with the welfare needs of feral cats, a leading cause of death for millions of animals every year and one of the greatest causes of extinction in the country? 

If there is a secret population of animals in the wild whose existence rests on urgent management and protection, is it ok to cut corners and negatively impact some individuals in order to save the species? 

It is against most guidelines to catch koalas if temperatures are over 35C, otherwise you will place them under great stress and even risk death.  But what if there has been a bushfire and this is their only chance of rescue? Is it ok to cut corners then?  Who makes these decisions and who is liable if things go wrong? 

Dr Paul 'flagging' a koala to get it down low enough to capture after a major bushfire.

Capturing an animal in the wild requires good planning, teamwork, clearly established ethical guidelines - and a bit of luck doesn't hurt.  All animals will undergo stress if captured.  The question is, do the benefits outweigh the costs? Will the animal, population or entire species benefit from the actions taken or data collected?  Have you done everything possible to lessen stress and to maximise what will come of this?

For this koala in the tree, if we did not rescue it, it would inevitably die of starvation and dehydration within days to weeks.  Back at the clinic these koalas were given first aid, and so began their long journey from rescue to rehab to release.

Having an outlined plan that will address most welfare concerns and building a committee that can effectively navigate the times when things go haywire, puts in place a system that is both pro-active over reactive, and considerate of all stakeholders. That way, challenging decisions are considered prior to when they are needed, and the filter of panic & fear loses its destructive power. 

I started out this essay with the intention of explaining the reasons and benefits of ethics committees.  But by being forced to think about what they actually do on a real world level, it has occurred to me that our society as a whole might benefit from the simple but undeniable attributes that all good committees share.  I’ll leave these here:

1. The problems in our world are complicated

2. We humans are diverse

3. When it comes to solving these problems, this diversity can be a strength

4. The world is also not perfect

5. But if we are proactive about establishing shared values, practicing inclusion and agreeing to a collective vision, it most definitely can be better