Free How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain by Gregory Berns

on campuses. Most fraternities had a dog, and professors often brought their dogs to class. What would college be without a dog chasing a Frisbee on the quad?
    Sadly, those days are long gone. They were gone even before I went to college. But it’s even worse now. Not only are dogs nowhere to be seen on a campus, but most universities explicitly forbid them. Only a handful of colleges, including Caltech and MIT, allow pets, and those are cats only. Lehigh University in Pennsylvania allows one cat or dog per fraternity or sorority, but it must remain in the house at all times. The only universities that allow dogs a relatively free run of campus are Stetson University and Eckerd College in Florida, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania (although in the latter case you need to prove that it is a family dog you have owned for at least a year).
    Emory University is not pet-friendly. Its policy manual reads, “Because of restrictions governing University insurance policies, concernsfor the integrity of research projects, and interest in the welfare of faculty, students, staff, and visitors, it is the policy of Emory University that animals not be permitted in University buildings.”
    Insurance policies? Is the welfare of the university really threatened by dogs? It sounded like some lawyer had visions of a rabid dog running amok.
    There was, however, a loophole in the prohibition against dogs: animals used for research were allowed. But this meant that several committees, buttressed with lawyers, would need to sign off on it. I mentally prepared myself to do battle against an army of “No.”
    When we do brain-imaging experiments on humans, all the procedures must be reviewed by a panel intended to protect volunteers from harm. Having performed close to a thousand MRIs on human subjects over the last decade, I have become accustomed to the approval process. But this time was different. We were going to scan dogs.
    It is one of the sad facts of biomedical science that the road to scientific progress is littered with the bodies of both humans and animals. The modern era of human experimentation began with the Nazis. Doctors and scientists performed horrific experiments on people held in concentration camps, and all of this was justified in the name of scientific progress. During the Nuremberg Trials, these atrocities came to light. As a result, a code of conduct was established for how to do medical research without putting people at great risk. These rules have evolved over time, especially after some horrible lapses in judgment, like the Tuskegee syphilis study, which ran from 1932 all the way to 1972. In the Tuskegee study, researchers withheld treatment to disadvantaged African Americans without their knowledge so that the scientists could document the natural course of syphilis. In 1974, after the study was shut down, the National Research Actestablished a commission for the protection of research subjects. The commission produced a landmark document called
The Belmont Report
, which not only summarized the history of human biomedical experimentation since World War II, but also laid down guidelines for experiments involving humans.
    The Belmont Report
contains three basic principles for human research. First, there must be “respect for persons.” This means that every person has the right to make his or her own decisions, including whether to volunteer for research. In other words, you cannot force or trick someone into participating in an experiment. Second is the principle of beneficence, which means that we should maximize the good resulting from research. This also means we should not harm people in the name of research. There is a bit of a gray zone here, however, in the recognition that all research carries some risk. As long as the potential benefits outweigh the risks, then the research is generally considered okay. For example, an experimental drug