A pilot study on ethical review processes of animal experiments local ethics committees in Türkiye

To use live animals for scientific purposes, it is necessary to obtain permission from ethics committees for animal experiments as required by legal regulations in Türkiye as well as worldwide. These committees are responsible for ensuring that animals are used only when scientifically necessary and that their welfare is protected. Although legal regulations set the general framework for how local ethics committees should evaluate projects involving animal experiments, project evaluation processes may vary between ethics committees. In our country, there are no studies in the literature on the differences in the project evaluation processes of local ethics committees, so there is no data on the level of this difference. In this study, it is aimed to reveal the differences in the evaluation processes of the Local Ethics Committees for Animal Experiments in our country by asking for the decisions and opinions of the studies in which there may be different opinions on how to evaluate and there are ambiguous provisions in the relevant legislation. The main topics determined for the projects to be evaluated include studies conducted in the field; in more than one province; using wild animals; conducted on cats/dogs bring to veterinary faculties/private veterinary clinics or on tissues taken from animals used in a previous experimental study. The fictional scenarios created in this context were sent to the ethics committees, which were selected by purposive sampling method and they were asked to evaluate the studies. The evaluations collected from them were examined and the data on the positive or negative decisions of the ethics committees for each project were analyzed and the differences and/or common points were determined. When the findings are evaluated, the fact that the committees made 4 different decisions for the first of the 5 scenarios in the study and 5 different decisions for the others revealed that there are great differences between the project evaluation processes of the ethics committees in our country. As a result of the evaluation of the decision justifications and opinions and suggestions, 4 main reasons for these differences were identified. It has been determined that the members of committees, which is the decision-making body in the studies to be carried out on animals, have lack of knowledge of the legislation and interpretation of the provisions of the legislation and of the context of the place where the studies will be carried out and the type of animal to be used, while the legal regulations do not clearly specify the paths to be followed in certain situations. In this context, solutions for the standardization of project evaluation processes, which are of great importance in terms of the quality of scientific studies using experimental animals and the protection of experimental animals, are also included in this thesis. It is hoped that this study will pioneer future studies by providing a basis for understanding the evaluation processes of projects involving animal experiments in our country and contribute to the standardization of these processes and the improvement of practices and legal regulations.