Cornish is correct that federal regulations do not specify that meeting minutes must be approved by the full IACUC. He is also correct that the Animal Welfare Act Regulations (2.35 (a)(2))1 and the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (IV, E.1.b)2 do specify that minutes of IACUC meetings, including records of attendance, activities of the committee and committee deliberations, shall be maintained by the IACUC. We presume that the decision to send a written rebuke to a faculty member from the IACUC for ignoring IACUC critiques in the pre-review process was a committee deliberation. An argument can be made that this information must be included in the minutes since the reprimand arose from a committee decision. We do not find it acceptable—and doubt that regulatory agencies would find it acceptable—for the IACUC chairperson to singlehandedly and permanently remove information concerning a committee deliberation from the minutes. If committee members have no opportunity to revise the minutes after the IAUC chairperson alters them, then Cornish's policy would seem to contradict the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
Compromise might be possible between Cornish and the IACUC administrator and members who believe that the full committee should be allowed to approve the minutes. The chairperson wants to exclude information from the minutes to spare possible harm to the faculty member. Minutes are considered records that might be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act3. Federal law does not specify that names of individuals involved in discussions must be included in IACUC meeting minutes. It might be possible to protect the faculty member's anonymity by referring to him by a generic title or code or by simply mentioning that the committee discussed the issue of investigators choosing to ignore IACUC pre-review comments. (As an aside, there is no law that investigators must respond to pre-review comments. However, if, on review, the IACUC agrees with the comments, approval of the protocol can be withheld until the revisions are made.) As part of the compromise, all IACUC members should have access to the minutes on a secure website and should be able to request alterations if they believe that relevant information has been omitted. Members should also be able to request deletion of material that does not fall within the guidelines (e.g., records of attendance, activities of the committee and committee deliberations), particularly if the information is of a sensitive nature. By working together, the chairperson, IACUC administrator and IACUC members can come to an agreement to protect sensitive information while providing the required information in the IACUC minutes.
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