What are some of the ethical issues that you are grappling with in your research? What are some of the ways in which you are responding to these questions?
When I first joined the lab, I watched my mentors perform perfusions on mice. I found the process deeply disturbing and gruesome because it included blood, organs, and the unconscious mouse right in front of me. What I've noticed more recently, however, is that when I'm deep in the technical work — cryosectioning, staining, and analyzing the tissue from those same mice — it becomes easy to forget that what's on the slide came from a living animal at all. I've been trying to stay aware of this unintentional apathy. I brought this topic up with one of my mentors, and he told me that the way he reconciles it is by keeping the human application in view — that the means are ultimately justified because of what the research could eventually do for patients suffering from debilitating conditions. Still, I don’t think the ethical weight should ever subside because even though medical research is done to save human lives, it unfortunately costs many animals’ lives.
As you continue your research, have you considered alternative viewpoints in your investigation? If so, how have these alternative viewpoints enriched or changed your project?
I'm early enough in the project that this is still largely a literature-level question for me. The main competing view I've had to consider is that behavioral deficits after retinal vein occlusion may be explained entirely by retinal pathology, with no meaningful upstream contribution from structures like the LGN in the brain. Taking that seriously has shaped how I'm thinking about the eventual analysis. The question can't just be whether LGN pathology is present, but whether it independently predicts functional outcomes after retinal damage is accounted for.
Where does your research take place? Take a photo of the place where your ideas and investigations are taking place, and post it to the Network!
I completely forgot to take a picture of my lab this week, so here is a picture of the view from my lab that I took during the winter!