Month: March 2005

OSU Responds to PCRM’s Claims about Spinal Cord Injury Course

As I mentioned earlier this year, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health claiming about an NIH-funded class at Ohio State University that trains researchers to injure the spinal cords of mice and rats so the animals can be used in spinal cord research. PCRM claims the course is in violation of the Animal Welfare Act and involves cruelty to animals.

OSU recently responded to an NIH request for a response to PCRM’s charges.

According to OSU student newspaper The Lantern, PCRM’s letter claimed that the researchers first performed multiple operations to impair the animals’ spinal cords and then force them to perform a number of task,

The animals are surely in a large amount of post-operative pain in addition to the complications they might experience as a result of their injury. This OSU course violates efforts designed to avoid or minimize such pain and distress to the animals.

In its response to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, OSU responded that a) the animals undergo only a single major surgery, b) animals are medicated for pain, c) behavioral study of the animals doesn’t occur until after the animals have recovered from the surgery, and d) the behavioral research does not involve forcing the animals to perform, but rather offers the animal rewards for performing certain tasks.

According to OSU’s response,

The instructors prepare a cohort of animals with spinal cord injury to train students in the proper conduct of behavioral testing. Testing does not commence until the animals are well recovered from surgery.

In her letter to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, PCRM’s Kristie Stoick wrote that there are alternatives to using animals for such training purposes,

Alternatives range from shadowing a researcher and the use of simulation and models to videotaped technique demonstrations.

OSU spokesman Earle Holland responded that this is simply not the case, telling The Lantern,

There are no available altenratives for whole organisms. If there were equivalent methods, every researcher would jump at the idea of not using animals. It’s really ludicrous. It’s just not true. Researchers would be using them. No one enjoys doing things to animals that are undesirable.

In its letter, OSU wrote that it formed a subcommittee of its Institutional Laboratory Animal Care and Use Committee that investigated the course and considered the possibility of non-animal alternatives,

By properly training new researchers in the current best practices, the potential for poorly performed experiments will be less, thereby allowing refinement and/or reduction of animal numbers. The investigators (and) instructors pride themselves on the high level of care given to the animals and are dedicated to teaching others to deal with their subjects carefully, compassionately, and to respect both animal and human life.

OSU is currently awaiting a response from the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare.

Source:

OSU denies animal cruelty complaints. Susan Kehoe, The Lantern (Ohio State University), February 28, 2005.

Wage Gap Decreases as Men’s Wages Fall or Hold Steady

The recession that started in 2001 has had one interesting effect on wages — it has resulted in a further closing of the wage gap between men and women as men’s wages held steady or declined over the past few years while women’s continued to rise.

According to the New York Times, a Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that women now earn 80 percent of what men do, compared to just 62 percent 25 years ago. But, according to The Times,

It turns out that almost half of that gap closed during two comparatively short periods of relatively hard times, totaling about six years. Those periods correspond with the recessions and cutbacks in the work force that marked the opening years of the last decade and the current one.

But while the changes came about as a result of recessions, they persisted even after those recessions were over. The Times surveys various experts who offer different explanations for this, from the fact that men tend to be over-represented in industries that were hit by both recessions such as manufacturing, to companies replacing high-paid men with slightly lower-paid women for administrative and professional jobs, to the increasing educational attainment and tendency for women to work full time.

The Times notes that Bureau of Labor statistics show a big increase in women’s employment in “executive, administrative and managerial occupations”. Women today hold 46 percent of those jobs, compared to just 32 percent in 1983. Similar gains occurred in professional jobs as well.

Given that women now constitute the majority of college graduates, those trends are likely to continue and the wage gap is likely to decline even further as more women work full time and marry later, focusing on their careers in their 20s and 30s. (In 2000, for example, the average age at first marriage was 25 for all women, and even older for college-educated women).

Source:

Women are gaining ground on the wage front. Louis Uchitelle, The New York Times, December 31, 2004.

Is PETA Training Slaughterhouse Workers?

Here’s an odd little item from India-based Express Newsline. A new slaughterhouse is being built in Delhi, India, planned for completion in December 2005. According to Express Newsline, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is involved in training workers at the slaughterhouse,

MCD will also be adopting more humane methods of slaughtering. A list of 100 butchers has already been sent to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for training on how to treat the animals. The abattoir will use methods like stunning and electric shocks before the animals is slaughtered.

Is PETA really in the business these days of training workers on the optimal way to slaughter animals?

Source:

PETA lessons for 100 Ghazipur butchers. Express News Service, February 2, 2005.

Medical Ethicists on Fertility Treatment

The other day I mentioned the case of Adriana Iliescu who gave birth to a baby girl at the age of 66. One of my personal pet peeves are medical ethicists who condemn this, and none is worse than medical ethicist megastar Arthur Caplan.

Caplan condemned Iliescu giving birth saying,

“. . . [reproductive decisions] are too driven by the desires of couples and not enough by the interests of children.”

. . .

Caplan called it [Iliescu giving birth] “completely unethical and immoral,” noting that average life expectancy for Romanian women is 73 years. The fact she is single makes it worse because it raises the odds the child would have no one to care for her if the mother dies, he said.

Now the reason I can’t stand ethicists like Caplan is that they apply moral principles in dealing with medical issues that we would never tolerate in other areas.

As I mentioned in my previous post on this issue, the claim that reproductive decisions are driven by selfish interests of parents is silly — almost all children who are intentionally conceived are done for the selfish interests of parents. I doubt there are many women who sit down with counselors and go into detail about all the advantages and disadvantages of having children and decide whether or not it truly makes sense from a purely altruistic point of view. We have children in large measure to fulfill the overwhelming biological drive to do so and the emotional fulfillment that being a parent brings.

So why should we then complain that people seeking fertility treatment are just like the rest of us? Why should they be held to some ridiculous altruistic standard?

The complaint about Iliescu’s age and unmarried status also could broadly apply to large numbers of women who regularly have children (in fact in some countries providing fertility treatment to single women of any age is very controversial and in some areas banned).

There is nothing at all objectionable about Iliescu’s decision to have a child, even at 66. Caplan simply repackages a noxious disrespect for the reproductive rights of individuals and repackages it as “medical ethics.”

Source:

Study finds wide range of ethics at fertility clinics. Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press, January 25, 2005.

New Zealand to Ban Up Skirt Filming

According to the BBC, New Zealand is planning to crack down on up skirt filming — wherein voyeurs use camera phones, camcorders or other devices in public to surreptitiously film under women’s clothes.

A surprising number of jurisdictions, including many states in the United States, discovered as the practice became more common they didn’t have specific laws to address the problem (and, generally, recording video in public places is considered unproblematic in most instances).

New Zealand Justice Minister Phil Goff told the BBC,

It is the most serious form of intrusion that someone can make into the privacy of another individual, filming them in the most intimate situations that you can imagine. Technology makes the problem much worse, both in terms of offensive publications and in terms of voyeuristic behavior. We’ve got to update the legislation to cater for the changes in technology which make it easier for people both to capture the images and to distribute them.

New Zealand is currently proposing changes in its laws that would make up skirt filming punishable by up to three years in prison. Knowingly possessing video or other materials obtained in this manner would be punishable by up to one year in prison.

Source:

NZ aims to jail ‘up skirt’ snappers. Kim Griggs, The BBC, December 9, 2004.

Adriana Iliescu Gives Birth at 66 — Good for Her

Some people were apparently horrified at the thought of 66-year-old Adriana Iliescu becoming apparently the oldest woman to ever give birth thanks to fertility treatments which she underwent for nine years before giving birth to Eliza Maria Iliescu in January.

For feminists like Ellen Goodman, the birth was a morality tale about the horrors of women forced to put aside children to get ahead in their careers. Goodman, in fact, seems to be under the impression that no one ever worked 70 hour weeks in their 30s until women entered the work force.

Medical ethicists did their standard, annoying hand wringing. Romanian authorities initiated an ethics investigation of Iliescu’s doctor. University of Calgary professor Chloe Atkins, who apparently specializes in medical ethics, told the Calgary Sun,

Personally, I think in that case, it was a very selfish decision. She probably won?t be around for much of the child?s life.

Atkins would like to see economic and health-related factors used to restrict fertility treatments. Because nobody with poor long-term health prospects or income ever had a baby before Iliescu. The selfish line is often used but also a bit odd, since I suspect that the overwhelming majority of children who are intentionally conceived and born for purely selfish reasons (namely that their parents selfishly decide that they want to be parents).

I think this was an unmitigated good with absolutely no downside. Anytime we can figure out how to bring new people into the world to loving parents, there simply are no drawbacks. Bravo to Ms. Iliescu.

Source:

World’s oldest mother becomes dubious poster ‘elder’ for having it all. Ellen Goodman, Detroit News, March 4, 2005.

‘World’s oldest mum’ raps critics. The BBC, January 19, 2005.

?Selfish? mom spurs age debate? Andrea Radke, Calgary Sun, January 21, 2005.