Guest guest Posted July 23, 2002 Report Share Posted July 23, 2002 Date 01:14 Jul 24 Subject NYTimes.com Article: Debate Over Whether to Defend Animal Tests Debate Over Whether to Defend Animal Tests July 23, 2002 By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG COLUMBUS, Ohio - There are no more cats in cages in the basement animal experiment rooms at the Ohio State University veterinary hospital here, but the angry letters still pour in. From Swarthmore, Pa.: " Cat torture. " From West Palm Beach, Fla.: " Cat killer. " From Austin, Tex.: " Despicable torture and murder. " The letters are intended for a veterinarian named Michael Podell and his government-backed research. To study why drug abusers seem to succumb more quickly to AIDS, Dr. Podell infected cats with the feline AIDS virus, gave them methamphetamines and put them to death, making a target of himself and Ohio State. Protesters picketed the university, spray-painted the president's house and glued the locks on the administration building doors. Dr. Podell received nearly a dozen death threats. So at 44, with a wife and two children, Dr. Podell is walking away from his academic career. Next month, he will join a private veterinary practice in a state he prefers not to name. He will leave behind his tenured job and the unfinished cat experiments, which were financed by a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. " I had to make a decision about what was best for my family, " he said one recent afternoon, a day after performing emergency brain surgery on his own dog, a Labrador named Hannah. " Staying was not the right thing. " Dr. Podell's departure, viewed as a loss by scientists and as a victory by the animal protection movement, provides a glimpse into how universities wrestle with the delicate issue of animal experiments. For years, most academic institutions have maintained a kind of uneasy silence about the work, fearful of attracting the attention of groups that have vandalized laboratories or harassed scientists. The Podell case has generated an intense debate about whether silence is the correct course. The prevailing sentiment, said Dr. Jordan Cohen, president of the American Association of Medical Colleges, is " Let's do this work, but let's not ballyhoo it. " The National Association for Biomedical Research, a nonprofit advocacy group, says that needs to change. But Frankie Trull, the group's executive director, said some university officials were afraid to defend animal experiments forcefully and others did not want to alienate donors. " The easy road is to avoid conflict, " Ms. Trull said. No one keeps track of all clashes between researchers and animal protection groups. But Ms. Trull noted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation says two groups - the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front - have caused $43 million in property damage in more than 600 criminal acts since 1996. Many of those incidents involved animal research, she said. Some institutions, like the University of Minnesota, have taken a very aggressive and public stance against animal protection protests, said Dr. Richard Bianco, the official in charge of laboratory animal care. When a psychiatric researcher experimenting with rhesus monkeys was picketed at home, Dr. Bianco said, the university provided police escorts and obtained a restraining order in court. When PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, set up shop at school fairs, the university countered by inviting students to tour laboratories. " We should be proud of what we do and talk about it, " Dr. Bianco said. " We're scared to death. That's our problem. " At Ohio State there was intense debate over who should defend Dr. Podell, and how. Reluctant to be his own public defender, Dr. Podell, who agreed to an interview but not a photograph, pressed the administration to take a public stand, perhaps with an opinion article in the local newspaper. University officials resisted, a move that Dr. Podell said contributed to his decision to leave. C. Bradley Moore, the vice president for research at Ohio State, said officials worried they would only " be helping the protesters protest. " But Glen Hoffsis, the dean of Ohio State's College of Veterinary Medicine, said speaking out would have been worth it, if only to help keep Dr. Podell. " We lost an excellent researcher, " Dean Hoffsis said. The university did go to great lengths to make Dr. Podell's laboratories secure, which Dr. Moore described as sensible. Dr. Larry Mathes, a virologist and Dr. Podell's collaborator, takes another view. " They put cameras in animal rooms and touch-pad keys with alarms, " Dr. Mathes said. " I categorize that as a siege mentality. This was all done quietly, not trying to draw attention, and I think it ended up backfiring on the university. " No one at Ohio State is particularly surprised that Dr. Podell's work touched a nerve. He proposed a series of experiments that called for infecting as many 120 cats with the feline immunodeficiency virus, a close cousin of the AIDS virus. The animals would then be injected with methamphetamine, known as crystal meth or speed, to determine whether the drug accelerated the virus's spread in the body. Dr. Podell, whose veterinary specialty is neurology, would put them under anesthesia to study changes in their brains, then put them to death. The vast majority of animal experiments, roughly 95 percent, involve rodents bred for research, Ms. Trull said. The federal Department of Agriculture, which regulates laboratory animal use, reports that more than 1.4 million other animals were used in experiments in 2000, including more than 25,500 cats. Of these, only 370 were subjected to what the department calls " unrelieved pain and distress. " Dr. Podell's cats were not among them. For Dr. Podell, the experiments, which were not completed and are not yet published, were the culmination of a decade's worth of work. But the study had several strikes against it in the image department, people here agree. First, Dr. Podell was experimenting with cats, a beloved household pet. Second, he is a veterinarian, someone from whom the public expects animal healing, not animal experiments. Finally, drug-abusing AIDS patients are not as sympathetic a constituency as, say, children with juvenile diabetes. " It was because it was cats, " said Robin Russell, president of Protect Our Earth's Treasures, or POET, a Columbus advocacy group that led the local protests against Dr. Podell. " It shocked a lot of people that a veterinarian was doing this. " Mr. Russell, 51, runs POET out of an attic room in his home in one of Columbus's historic districts. He won an important legal victory in 1994, when a court ruled that Ohio's public records law entitled his group to examine Ohio State's animal research protocols. Immediately, he began attending meetings of the university ethics panel that reviews animal research. Officials of the university laboratory animal resources program, in turn, began attending POET meetings. A kind of truce developed. But it fell apart over Dr. Podell. Before he could submit his grant application to the health institutes, Dr. Podell needed to show the ethics committee that he had considered alternatives and would not subject the animals to unrelieved pain. When the debate was over, Mr. Russell said, he looked at a fellow POET member and said, " This is ridiculous. " He told the university officials they could no longer attend his meetings. Mr. Russell also sought help from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that argues that the work could have been done in people. " The advantage of his study, " said Dr. Neal Barnard, the group's founder, " was that you could kill the subject. " Dr. Podell says the study could not be done in people, and says he does not take lightly the idea of sacrificing cats. But he says he did make an ethical calculation: " It's a small number of animals to get information to potentially help millions of people. " Officials at the National Institutes of Health agreed. But by the time Dr. Podell began his research in August 2000, POET had given the research a catchy name, " Cats on Speed, " and had begun picketing. PETA put the experiment on its " action alert " list. Soon Dr. Podell and the university were flooded with thousands of e-mail messages and letters. Dr. William Yonushonis, who directs the animal resources program, said he employed a student part time just to send out letters to answer them. Mostly, Dr. Podell said, the letters and e-mail were a nuisance. But colleagues could see that the occasional threats, all anonymous and impossible to trace, rattled him and his wife. In one, he received a photograph of a British scientist whose car had been bombed, with the words " You're next, " scrawled across the top. " If he was by himself, he probably would have stayed and fought the battle, " his collaborator, Dr. Mathes, said. " I think one of his biggest fears was that his children would get labeled the children of a cat killer. " Last month, Dr. Mathes and Dr. Podell published a paper that led to the cat experiment. It showed methamphetamine that prompts the feline immunodeficiency virus to replicate 15 times as fast as normal. The president of Ohio State University, William E. Kirwan, who has since become chancellor of Maryland's state university system, hailed it as an important discovery and published the opinion piece that Dr. Podell had long been requesting. The article appeared in The Columbus Dispatch, under the headline " Animals are critical for research. " It ran on June 14, two days after Dr. Podell announced he was leaving Ohio State. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/23/science/23CATS.html?ex=1028444470 & ei=1 & en= 5d0ae100e735fa0c Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 24, 2002 Report Share Posted July 24, 2002 Hi, In the United States alone the total number of laboratory animals that suffer owing to unrelieved pain exceeds one million each year (Stokes, 2000).Unrelieved pain meaning that no pain reducing agents such as anaesthesia are administered prior to or post invasive experimental procedures (Stokes, 2000). Stokes, S., (2000) Reducing unrelieved pain and distress in laboratory animals using humane endpoints. ILAR Journal 41(2) Cheers, Helena Date 01:14 Jul 24 Subject NYTimes.com Article: Debate Over Whether to Defend Animal Tests Debate Over Whether to Defend Animal Tests July 23, 2002 By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG COLUMBUS, Ohio - There are no more cats in cages in the basement animal experiment rooms at the Ohio State University veterinary hospital here, but the angry letters still pour in. From Swarthmore, Pa.: " Cat torture. " From West Palm Beach, Fla.: " Cat killer. " From Austin, Tex.: " Despicable torture and murder. " The letters are intended for a veterinarian named Michael Podell and his government-backed research. To study why drug abusers seem to succumb more quickly to AIDS, Dr. Podell infected cats with the feline AIDS virus, gave them methamphetamines and put them to death, making a target of himself and Ohio State. Protesters picketed the university, spray-painted the president's house and glued the locks on the administration building doors. Dr. Podell received nearly a dozen death threats. So at 44, with a wife and two children, Dr. Podell is walking away from his academic career. Next month, he will join a private veterinary practice in a state he prefers not to name. He will leave behind his tenured job and the unfinished cat experiments, which were financed by a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. " I had to make a decision about what was best for my family, " he said one recent afternoon, a day after performing emergency brain surgery on his own dog, a Labrador named Hannah. " Staying was not the right thing. " Dr. Podell's departure, viewed as a loss by scientists and as a victory by the animal protection movement, provides a glimpse into how universities wrestle with the delicate issue of animal experiments. For years, most academic institutions have maintained a kind of uneasy silence about the work, fearful of attracting the attention of groups that have vandalized laboratories or harassed scientists. The Podell case has generated an intense debate about whether silence is the correct course. The prevailing sentiment, said Dr. Jordan Cohen, president of the American Association of Medical Colleges, is " Let's do this work, but let's not ballyhoo it. " The National Association for Biomedical Research, a nonprofit advocacy group, says that needs to change. But Frankie Trull, the group's executive director, said some university officials were afraid to defend animal experiments forcefully and others did not want to alienate donors. " The easy road is to avoid conflict, " Ms. Trull said. No one keeps track of all clashes between researchers and animal protection groups. But Ms. Trull noted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation says two groups - the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front - have caused $43 million in property damage in more than 600 criminal acts since 1996. Many of those incidents involved animal research, she said. Some institutions, like the University of Minnesota, have taken a very aggressive and public stance against animal protection protests, said Dr. Richard Bianco, the official in charge of laboratory animal care. When a psychiatric researcher experimenting with rhesus monkeys was picketed at home, Dr. Bianco said, the university provided police escorts and obtained a restraining order in court. When PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, set up shop at school fairs, the university countered by inviting students to tour laboratories. " We should be proud of what we do and talk about it, " Dr. Bianco said. " We're scared to death. That's our problem. " At Ohio State there was intense debate over who should defend Dr. Podell, and how. Reluctant to be his own public defender, Dr. Podell, who agreed to an interview but not a photograph, pressed the administration to take a public stand, perhaps with an opinion article in the local newspaper. University officials resisted, a move that Dr. Podell said contributed to his decision to leave. C. Bradley Moore, the vice president for research at Ohio State, said officials worried they would only " be helping the protesters protest. " But Glen Hoffsis, the dean of Ohio State's College of Veterinary Medicine, said speaking out would have been worth it, if only to help keep Dr. Podell. " We lost an excellent researcher, " Dean Hoffsis said. The university did go to great lengths to make Dr. Podell's laboratories secure, which Dr. Moore described as sensible. Dr. Larry Mathes, a virologist and Dr. Podell's collaborator, takes another view. " They put cameras in animal rooms and touch-pad keys with alarms, " Dr. Mathes said. " I categorize that as a siege mentality. This was all done quietly, not trying to draw attention, and I think it ended up backfiring on the university. " No one at Ohio State is particularly surprised that Dr. Podell's work touched a nerve. He proposed a series of experiments that called for infecting as many 120 cats with the feline immunodeficiency virus, a close cousin of the AIDS virus. The animals would then be injected with methamphetamine, known as crystal meth or speed, to determine whether the drug accelerated the virus's spread in the body. Dr. Podell, whose veterinary specialty is neurology, would put them under anesthesia to study changes in their brains, then put them to death. The vast majority of animal experiments, roughly 95 percent, involve rodents bred for research, Ms. Trull said. The federal Department of Agriculture, which regulates laboratory animal use, reports that more than 1.4 million other animals were used in experiments in 2000, including more than 25,500 cats. Of these, only 370 were subjected to what the department calls " unrelieved pain and distress. " Dr. Podell's cats were not among them. For Dr. Podell, the experiments, which were not completed and are not yet published, were the culmination of a decade's worth of work. But the study had several strikes against it in the image department, people here agree. First, Dr. Podell was experimenting with cats, a beloved household pet. Second, he is a veterinarian, someone from whom the public expects animal healing, not animal experiments. Finally, drug-abusing AIDS patients are not as sympathetic a constituency as, say, children with juvenile diabetes. " It was because it was cats, " said Robin Russell, president of Protect Our Earth's Treasures, or POET, a Columbus advocacy group that led the local protests against Dr. Podell. " It shocked a lot of people that a veterinarian was doing this. " Mr. Russell, 51, runs POET out of an attic room in his home in one of Columbus's historic districts. He won an important legal victory in 1994, when a court ruled that Ohio's public records law entitled his group to examine Ohio State's animal research protocols. Immediately, he began attending meetings of the university ethics panel that reviews animal research. Officials of the university laboratory animal resources program, in turn, began attending POET meetings. A kind of truce developed. But it fell apart over Dr. Podell. Before he could submit his grant application to the health institutes, Dr. Podell needed to show the ethics committee that he had considered alternatives and would not subject the animals to unrelieved pain. When the debate was over, Mr. Russell said, he looked at a fellow POET member and said, " This is ridiculous. " He told the university officials they could no longer attend his meetings. Mr. Russell also sought help from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that argues that the work could have been done in people. " The advantage of his study, " said Dr. Neal Barnard, the group's founder, " was that you could kill the subject. " Dr. Podell says the study could not be done in people, and says he does not take lightly the idea of sacrificing cats. But he says he did make an ethical calculation: " It's a small number of animals to get information to potentially help millions of people. " Officials at the National Institutes of Health agreed. But by the time Dr. Podell began his research in August 2000, POET had given the research a catchy name, " Cats on Speed, " and had begun picketing. PETA put the experiment on its " action alert " list. Soon Dr. Podell and the university were flooded with thousands of e-mail messages and letters. Dr. William Yonushonis, who directs the animal resources program, said he employed a student part time just to send out letters to answer them. Mostly, Dr. Podell said, the letters and e-mail were a nuisance. But colleagues could see that the occasional threats, all anonymous and impossible to trace, rattled him and his wife. In one, he received a photograph of a British scientist whose car had been bombed, with the words " You're next, " scrawled across the top. " If he was by himself, he probably would have stayed and fought the battle, " his collaborator, Dr. Mathes, said. " I think one of his biggest fears was that his children would get labeled the children of a cat killer. " Last month, Dr. Mathes and Dr. Podell published a paper that led to the cat experiment. It showed methamphetamine that prompts the feline immunodeficiency virus to replicate 15 times as fast as normal. The president of Ohio State University, William E. Kirwan, who has since become chancellor of Maryland's state university system, hailed it as an important discovery and published the opinion piece that Dr. Podell had long been requesting. The article appeared in The Columbus Dispatch, under the headline " Animals are critical for research. " It ran on June 14, two days after Dr. Podell announced he was leaving Ohio State. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/23/science/23CATS.html?ex=1028444470 & ei=1 & en= 5d0ae100e735fa0c _______________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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