Dr. Mismo Virale was shocked when he was notified that an allegation of non-compliance was reported for animal activities in his lab; although Virale is a new faculty hire at Great Eastern University (GEU), he has over 20 years of experience in conducting basic science and animal research. According to the IACUC office, Virale’s lab technician, Li Wang, was holding animals in standard housing instead of the required containment housing (the error was caught 24 hours after injection). Virale’s animals, which were housed alone in his own vivarium housing room, were administered a low dose of tamoxifen, and never in his past 20+ years were these animals required to be housed in anything other than standard housing. A safety risk assessment was performed by the biosafety officer (BSO) and it was determined that there was no actual risk of staff exposure; the cages had not been opened or changed and no exposure to personnel occurred in the 24 hours. Nonetheless, GEUs IACUC saw this as a serious non-compliance (improper containment of a hazard and potential risk to human safety) and decided to suspend Li Wang for one month with mandatory retraining.
Just two days later, Dr. Otra Ipotesi, another Principal Investigator (PI) in Virale’s new department, hosted the IACUC semi-annual inspection of their animal use lab space and the inspectors found one lab member wasn’t wearing safety glasses and the eye wash station wasn’t flushed in the prior month. The inspection findings were routed to Ipotesi, via the e-IACUC system. Ipotesi responded that the eye wash had been flushed and that he spoke with his lab about the importance of safety and wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE). During a departmental faculty meeting, the department chair discussed all the animal- and IACUC-related matters with the faculty. Virale was furious when he found out that Ipotesi wasn’t penalized for his safety matters while his tech was suspended.
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