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The use of nonhuman animals in research has long been a source of bioethical and scientific debate. We consider the oversight and use of nonhuman animals in chimeric research. We conducted interviews with twelve members of embryonic stem cell research oversight committees, nine members of institutional animal care and use committees, and fourteen scientists involved in human–nonhuman‐animal chimeric research in different areas of the United States. Interviews addressed animal welfare and conceptual issues associated with moral status and humanization of nonhuman animals that contain human cells. Our findings suggest that concepts of enhanced moral status and consciousness are not very useful in human–nonhuman‐animal chimeric research in part because their meanings are not easily defined, which presents challenges to applying the concepts in research. Instead, scientists and oversight committee members we interviewed seemed to rely on standard assessments of changes in animal welfare when focusing on the ethics of human‐animal chimeric research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical trials on healthy volunteers generate unique ethical challenges both because participants accept potential physical risks without the possibility of direct medical benefit and because participants' financial motivations to enroll in trials could lead to their exploitation. Despite the large volume of published empirical studies and ethical analyses of healthy volunteer research, there has been little concerted effort to change how healthy‐volunteer research is overseen or regulated. A new collaborative effort to do so is the VolREthics (Volunteers in Research and Ethics) Initiative. Launched in 2022, this initiative brings together an international community to engage questions about how healthy volunteers could best be protected from the risks of harm and exploitation while the validity of clinical trials is optimized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]