TROUBLED WATERS - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

Relevance of ethical review to whaling conducted under the auspices ofscienceWhaling for scientific purposes is permitted under Article VIII of the International Convention for theRegulation of Whaling (see chapter 6). Any proposal for lethal scientific research on whales (‘scientificwhaling’) must be submitted to the Scientific Committee of the IWC for review. This Committeeconsists of scientists from contracting governments to the IWC, and invited scientists from othernations, with the necessary expertise to assess the validity of research projects.A requirement of the review is that “an evaluation of the likelihood that the methodology will lead toachievement of the scientific objectives” is carried out (as per requirements laid out in the Report of theInternational Whaling Commission 36, 133). Any contracting government can submit such a proposal.Scientific reviews of proposals are carried out by the Scientific Committee, and involve lengthy reviewand comment upon the initial proposals, interim results of long-term projects, and analyses of thevalidity of results from finished projects. However, at no point is an ethical review of the proposalconducted, although the IWC has acknowledged the validity of an ethical review process. In 1998 aresolution was passed requesting that the Secretariat of the IWC conduct a comprehensive review ofethical considerations applied in other international scientific organisations (IWC 1999a). TheSecretariat’s review led to the general conclusion that existing international ethical guidelines stress thatresearch should aim to cause “the minimum of stress and distress, suffering and pain, and at the sametime considering if the research results can be achieved using fewer animals or by other (non-lethal) means”(IWC 1999b).ETHICS AND WHALING UNDER SPECIAL PERMIT107Were an ethical review to be carried out on Japan’s and Iceland’s whaling proposals, a number of issuesof relevance would emerge (see Table 2). Concerns have regularly been raised by some members of theScientific Committee as to the likelihood of the lethal research proposals actually achieving their aims.Some scientists in the Scientific Committee have criticised Japan’s research programmes, stimulatingrepeated debate on the scientific validity of the studies (IWC 1999c, IWC 2000, IWC 2001, IWC2003b).In 2003, Iceland presented its first proposal for scientific permit whaling in 14 years and various viewswere expressed, including the statement that “this proposal is inadequate especially in its description ofsample sizes” and “concerns were raised regarding the adequacy of the sampling scheme to meet theintended objectives” (IWC 2003c, p.48-49). In fact, Icelandic scientists acknowledged that the samplesizes in their proposal for lethal research may not be adequate to resolve all of the objectives of theproject (IWC 2003c, Annex Q, p.11).When doubt is so clearly cast upon the validity of a scientific proposal and its ability to achieve its aims,then the lethal take of any animals is likely to be judged as unethical. Additionally, if the specifiednumber of animals to be used will not achieve a conclusive result, then the research proposal must beseen as flawed. An ethical approval permit would not be issued for this work in other areas of animalresearch.A number of non-lethal methods are regularly used to address questions similar or identical to thoseproposed in the permit whaling programmes. Non-lethal biopsy sampling is widely used to collect smallplugs of tissue from live cetaceans. A technique for ‘scrubbing’ a cetacean’s skin is also used to collect