The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee is entrusted with assessing the ethics of proposed projects prior to approval of animal research. The role of the IACUC is detailed in legislation and binding rules, which are in turn inspired by the Three Rs: the principles of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement. However, these principles are poorly defined. Although this provides the IACUC leeway in assessing a proposed project, it also affords little guidance. Our goal is to provide procedural and philosophical clarity (...) to the IACUC without mandating a particular outcome. To do this, we analyze the underlying logic of the Three Rs and conclude that the Three Rs accord animals moral standing, though not necessarily “rights” in the philosophical sense. We suggest that the Rs are hierarchical, such that Replacement, which can totally eliminate harm, should be considered prior to Reduction, which decreases the number of animals harmed, with Refinement being considered last. We also identify the need for a hitherto implicit fourth R: Reject, which allows the IACUC to refuse permission for a project which does not promise sufficient benefit to offset the pain and distress likely to be caused by the proposed research. (shrink)

New scholarship paves the way for Earth-loving spirituality grounded in the ancientChristian image of God as an avian life form.

Animal research in laboratories is currently informed by the three R’s (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement), a common-sense theory of animal research ethics. In addition a fourth R (Refusal) is needed to address research plans that are so badly conceived that their chances of gaining any knowledge worth the animal suffering they cause are nil. Unfortunately, these four R’s do not always yield workable solutions to the moral problems faced regularly by wildlife researchers. It is possible to develop analogs in the (...) sphere of environmental research to these four R’s, creating a common-sense theory of environmental research ethics that will provide significant guidance to researchers and win acceptance from almost all stakeholders. This theory can be articulated in terms of twenty basic principles. (shrink)

The author proposes that the Spirit goes well beyond the conventional Christian understanding of the force that unites the Father and Son in the Trinity, and presents a new model of the Spirit, one that is based on the earth and is a natural force that heals the violence humans have done to nature and to one another, and forges unity among enemies and brings opposites together, overcoming the differences that define personal and community life. Original.

Two cross-modal experiments provide partial support for O'Regan & Noë's (O&N's) claim that sensorimotor contingencies mediate perception. Differences in locating a target sound accompanied by a spatially disparate neutral light correlate with whether the two stimuli were perceived as spatially unified. This correlation suggests that internal representations are necessary for conscious perception, which may also mediate sensorimotor contingencies.

Today the wood thrush returned to the Crum Woods. I have been waiting for this event for months. I moved to a house in the woods three years ago, and at that time I heard a strange and wonderful bird call in the forest. The song of the wood thrush is a melody unlike anything I had ever heard. Liquid, flute-like, perfectly pitched—the thrush vocalizes a kind of duet with itself in which it simultaneously produces two independent musical notes that (...) reverberate with one another. I have read that Tibetan monks can also sing two notes at the same time, a baseline and a melody line in contrapuntal balance, so now I think of the wood thrush as the singing monk of the forest.1In the spring and summer I wake up, and often .. (shrink)