Day: January 6, 2004

Tufts Kills Five Dogs in Bone Research Experiment Despite Animal Rights Objections

The New England Anti-Vivisection Society and other animal rights groups failed to stop Tufts University’s School of Veterinary Medicine from killing five dogs involved in research. Tufts also temporarily suspended an Adopt-A-Dog program which had been the source of information about the dog research and which Tufts apparently believed might pose a security risk by bringing opponents of its bone research into its facilities.

Tufts is currently doing research on different methods of fixing broken bones in dogs. One experiment involved breaking the bones of the back two legs of five dogs using a surgical procedure. One leg on each dog was set using a conventional fixator attached with external screws, while the other leg was set using a more flexible fixator. The animals were anesthetized during the surgical procedures, and given drugs for pain as their bone healed.

The final step in the procedure, however, required the dogs to be killed so the leg bones of the dogs could be removed and evaluated.

The New England Anti-Vivisection Society and about 30 Tufts students had been protesting the planned killing of the dogs for months. In a December 29 press release NEAVS president Theo Capaldo said,

In response to the students’ concerns, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) asked them to find alternatives to the study when actually the IACUC should have demanded that the researchers do a better job of finding alternatives to this egregious study in the first place. The IACUC should never have approved a study that involved: such severe injury to healthy dogs; the need for days of heavy pain killers; and the killing of the dogs in the end. The research should never have met the approval of this committee. The students are absolutely right to call into question this unjustifiable research and its egregious end point.

. . .

If Tufts is unwilling to allow its own students to insist on the ethical imperative to find alternatives to such awful research, then they need to be challenged. After all, the students involved represent those interested in helping and healing animals and those interested in changing public policy about how animals are treated in our society. In prohibiting these students from doing this work at their own University, Tufts is not only being inhumane to the dogs but to the students as well. How can the University not allow them to do what they are there to learn to do: make the world a better place for animals? It’s a very disheartening contradiction.

In a prepared statement, Tufts spokeswoman Barbara Donato said,

Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine recognizes that the responsible conduct of biomedical research using animals is a highly complex public policy issue over which people of diverse backgrounds will disagree. We respect diversity of opinions on this matter and encourage our students, faculty and staff to develop and express informed views while also respecting the viewpoints of others.

Tufts also decided to temporarily suspended an Adopt-A-Teaching Dog program. Students apparently learned of the bone study through their involvement in that program. That program involves using students walking and playing with dogs used to teach non-invasive veterinary techniques.

Tufts apparently feared that giving students opposed to the bone research access to their research facilities was a potential security threat. According to Donato,

To the extent that we can permit students to access the facility without jeopardizing security, we hope to do so. . . . Any research institution, including Tufts, has an obligation to provide a secure facility for the housing of research animals and will do whatever is necessary to protect the security and welfare of the animals, as well as the integrity of the research.

Sources:

Tufts kills five dogs in bone research project despite protests. Donna Boynton; Telegram & Gazette (Massachusetts), January 3, 2004.

New England Anti-Vivisection Society and Tufts Students Ask Tufts to Save Dogs’ Lives: ‘Turn over a New Leaf’ for the New Year. Press Release, New England Anti-Vivisection Society, December 29, 2003.

Mad Cow Disease in America

The biggest animal-related story of the New Year is the discovery of a single Mad Cow-infected calf in late December and steps the U.S. government is taking to reduce both the public health and economic threat that this poses.

Although Mad Cow Disease doesn’t appear to be the sort of plague that animal rights activists once claimed it would be (I once attended a talk by Howard Lyman where he claimed the disease would rival AIDS) it is a serious public health threat and the precautions taken so far are more than warranted.

Of course some folks both inside and outside of the animal rights movement do not appear to have any problem substituting their ignorance where the facts do not quite fit the case.

Time Magazine writer Margaret Carlson decided to exaggerate to the number of cases of vCJD (the human form of Mad Cow Disease) in Great Britain. During an appearance on CNN ‘s Capitol Gang, Carlson said (emphasis added),

But the United States has a lot of information that Britain didn’t have when they had their outbreak of mad cow disease and the government kept saying, Don’t worry about it, and thousands of people contracted the disease. And while the system of branding and numbers and all that isn’t what it should be, it’s a lot better than it used to be, better than it is in Britain. And the testing is so much better. So it might be contained, and then there’ll be very little political fallout.

In fact, from 1996 through 2001, there were only 111 “probable cases” of vCJD. The total number of cases is likely to be less than 500 — and this in the country where people probably consumed more Mad Cow-tainted beef than any other.

The reality is that although fears of a widespread human outbreak might have been warranted in the mid-1990s, by the end of the decade it was clear that transmission of the disease between cows and human beings through the consumption of tainted meat was actually quite difficult.

But don’t tell that to former USDA veterinarian Lester Friedlander who had one of the more idiotic statements about Mad Cow Disease. Friedlander has rightly campaigned for years for a ban on downer animals — a ban which the Bush administration put in place after the announcement of the discovery of the Mad Cow-infected calf. Friedlander was widely quoted in news stories about the Mad Cow calf, but showed his ignorance in responding to USDA Secretary Ann Veneman’s statement that, “I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner and we remain confident in the
safety of our food supply.” According to a Go Vegan Texas!, Freidlander’s response was,

She might as well kiss her ass goodbye, then.

What an ignorant statement. That would be like claiming that people should stop eating vegetables due to Hepatitis A outbreaks (which are a much bigger threat to human health than Mad Cow disease).

Animal rights groups are already trying to parlay the discovery of the Mad Cow-infected calf to push their campaigns for Americans to go vegetarian. Those are about as likely to succeed as past such campaigns have. In Great Britain there was an initial upsurge in vegetarianism which was later reversed when it became clear that the risk to human health was relatively small, especially after government-mandated changes in animal agriculture. In the United States, the odds of anyone actually contracting vCJD are so low that it’s doubtful there will even be any temporary upsurge in vegetarianism.

Source:

Special Two-Hour Report on Mad Cow Disease. Press Release, Go Vegan Texas!, December 29, 2003.