F. Barbara Orlans, PhD passed away on June 18, 2010 in her

home in Bethesda MD.  SCAW expresses sympathy to her

family and acknowledges the loss of a major contributor to the

improvement of humane care and treatment of research animals.

Dr. Orlans was the Founding President of the Scientists Center

for Animal Welfare (SCAW) in 1984, later becoming the Center’s first Executive Director, and spent many years establishing SCAW as a nonprofit and educational organization. Her invaluable and significant contributions were critical factors in SCAW’s establishment as a recognized resource for objective information about the use of animals in research.

 Dr. Orlans' recent position was as a Research Assistant Professor with the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. Her scholarship at the Institute involved the ethical constraints on the humane use of animals. Professor Orlans' recent research issues included inclusion of rats, mice, and birds in the Animal Welfare Act; policies concerning the humane use of animals in high school and undergraduate education and avoidance of animal pain-inflicting projects; and adoption as national policy a system requiring investigators to categorize the level of animal pain in their experiments.   She worked at the NIH in Bethesda for many years, serving as Staff Scientist, Cardiac Diseases Branch, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, in her last position there. 

Dr. Orlans was the author or contributor to many publications, including  Animal Care: From Protozoa to Small Mammals, In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation, and the Humane Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice.  She also wrote many articles which were published in ATLA, Lab Animal, Ethics and Behavior, and several other well-known publications.