Florida State University Nerve Toxins Administration Case Analysis Discussion

Attached is a reading assignments and you have to answer this case study and the question (Give your though based on the reading and use bible verses)

CASE STUDY 6.10

You are a graduate student working on a project that involves administering nerve toxins directly into the cerebrospinal fluid of rats by using a special infuser connected to tubing that you have surgically implanted into the base of each rat’s skull. Administering different nerve toxins to block specific effects of different types of drugs will help determine how the drugs work. After surgery, the nerve toxin is given, and a few days later the investigational drug is given to determine whether it will have an effect. This protocol has been approved by the IACUC and is being funded by a grant from the Department of Defense. Over the past few weeks, you have carefully implanted a catheter into the base of each rat’s skull and then infused the specified amount of nerve toxin. When you go to the vivarium to take the rats to the lab to administer the investigational drugs, you find that a number of the rats are paralyzed or dead. You did not expect this. The lab director is currently out of town, so you go to the lab’s senior graduate student, Tom, for advice. Tom will be able to complete his dissertation writing when this experiment is done, and he has made it clear that he wants this experiment to run without delay. You ask him whether you should stop the experiment to determine why some of the rats are dead or paralyzed. He responds that stopping the experiment now would waste several weeks of work and delay completion of his dissertation. Stopping now may mean having to start over later and could result in using even more rats. He further explains that the IACUC might even prohibit restarting the experiment, so the rats would have died for nothing because the data would have to be obtained another way. He suggests that the paralysis and death of some of the rats may be due to your inadequate experience in performing rat surgery or infusions, so your gaining further practice by continuing this experiment may result in better outcomes for the rest of the rats on which you perform surgery. What do you do now? Do you continue performing surgery and infusions on the rats, knowing that more rats may be harmed? Do you stop the experiment and inform the IACUC, which risks earning the disfavor of Tom, with whom you have to work? How would you explain each course of action to the IACUC?

Question :

Is there a difference between using valium, using tobacco, and using marijuana?