Dr. Virale’s predicament presents several questions: what is GEU’s actual policy on housing tamoxifen-treated mice? Is it an IACUC policy or a Safety policy? Is Dr. Virale truly out of compliance, and if so, with which office? These are unanswerable questions in this fictional scenario, but this plot nicely illustrates an actuality most institutions face at some time or another: policies aren’t perfect. Any time a policy isn’t working as intended – it is not providing clear guidance on what is expected or required in the conduct of university business – it should be revisited.
Somewhere along the way, something went wrong for Dr. Virale, and GEU should be invested in finding out why. These instances – though frustrating – present opportunity for programmatic growth. A thorough review of this policy is a reasonable place to start and should solicit input from stakeholders across the university, such as facility operations and animal users in addition to Safety and the IACUC. Regardless of the eventual outcome for the policy, this exercise of rigorous self-evaluation with participation by all invested departments is expected to strengthen the collective understanding of the policy and its rationale. This situation also invites evaluation of the Principal Investigator (PI) onboarding and animal import processes: how was Dr. Virale able to secure protocol approval, complete facility orientation, transfer animals into conventional housing, and initiate tamoxifen treatment without realizing containment was expected? Bolstering and streamlining these and related processes should be universally beneficial to the program.
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