The purpose of alternate IACUC members should be to serve when regular members are unavailable and not simply to increase the IACUC membership when required to carry out multiple tasks. If Great Eastern needs to establish multiple Designated Member review groups or inspect multiple areas of the facility at the same time, then it would seem that either the scheduling process is not functioning adequately or the University should increase the number of regular IACUC members. Being from a small commercial laboratory with seven IACUC members, I can appreciate the inconvenience that can arise when there are not enough members present to constitute a quorum and carry out official IACUC duties. However, it is very difficult for me to understand why an institution, such as the infamous Great Eastern, would have so few regular (with corresponding alternate) IACUC members that the regular member and his/her alternate member are needed to conduct IACUC duties at the same time.

The IACUC Guidebook states: “An IACUC member and his/her alternate may not count toward a quorum at the same time or act in an official IACUC member capacity at the same time1.” It seems clear that Great Eastern's regular member and alternate member will be acting “in an official IACUC member capacity at the same time,” whether they are acting as voting members of separate Designated Member review groups or doing IACUC inspections in different areas of the building. Even if the IACUC inspections were done on two separate days, I believe they would still be considered as separate parts to the same official IACUC inspection; therefore, using the regular member on one day and the alternate on another would be tantamount to using them at the same time.

The alternate member should participate only in a situation in which the regular member is absolutely unavailable. The regular member cannot be considered as 'unavailable' when he or she is carrying out official IACUC duties. As a side note, perhaps Great Eastern should consider hiring an IACUC Coordinator to help plan and schedule official IACUC duties more efficiently.