By Joel Thurtell
“Pound release.”
Fightin’ words.
I remember a packed suburban Detroit city council meeting back in 1985 when well over a hundred angry citizens confronted elected officials over the issue of selling animals from the animal shelter for medical research. This topic was no less hot than the plan of another city to limit handgun ownership. The Humane Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals could, well, animate people every bit as well as the National Rifle Association.
There was a fair amount of emotion on the research side, too, vented as frustration with people who seemed not to understand the importance — the human good — of using animals for research.
Hot issue.
Very complex.
I wished for more substance from the January 14, 2009 Detroit Free Press Page One story with the header, “U-M’s surgical training experiments on dogs blasted,” with a subhead, “Animals used, then killed; faculty defends class.”
Sensational headlines for a story that didn’t even jump inside the paper. Bet the reporter was frustrated. Probably had tons of material for a story that ended abruptly after presenting a brief firefight between animal rights people and some defensive UM folk.
I wrote stories on animal rights vs. experimentation for the February 14, 1985 Free Press. I’m hoping that, despite their almost 24-year-old dateline, they will illuminate the issue.
Articles appear with permission of the Detroit Free Press.
Contents
Introduction
1. POUND NEW BATTLEGROUND IN COMPLEX CONFLICT
2. RESEARCH OR CRUELTY? ANIMALS ALLOW US CHANCE TO SAVE LIFE
3. RESEARCH OR CRUELTY? POUND NOT A PLACE TO FIND GUINEA PIGS
Introduction
Text: Should dog pounds provide unclaimed dogs and cats to scientists for use
in medical research?
Animal welfare groups say the answer is no.
Medical researchers strongly disagree.
Until recently, Humane Societies have carried on their political campaign
mainly at the level of local government.
Now, Humane Society officials are hoping state lawmakers will introduce and
enact a bill prohibiting the use of pound animals in experiments.
In this issue, the Free Press:
* Shows how communities in western Wayne and Washtenaw County dispose of
pound animals (this page).
* Presents two opposing views — an animal welfare spokeswoman discusses
why she wants a ban on using pound animals for research, and a University of
Michigan Medical School professor explains why he fears such a measure would
retard medical progress (this page).
* Provides an in-depth examination of how the opposing sides view the issue
(page 3A).
1. POUND NEW BATTLEGROUND IN COMPLEX CONFLICT
Sub-Head:
Byline: JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Pub-Date: 2/14/1985
Memo: ALSO RAN IN WAYNE WEST AND DOWNRIVER ZONES; SEE RELATED ; STORIES BY MORRIS, MALIVIN AND THURTELL AND SIDEBAR
Correction:
Text: Richard Malvin stopped abruptly in front of a bulletin board near his
office in the University of Michigan Medical School’s animal research
laboratories, and pointed to a lecture announcement.
” ‘Zinc-copper Interaction and a New Treatment for Wilson’s Disease,’ ” the
U-M physiology professor quoted. “A new treatment — that’s what animal
research does.”
It does more than that, in the view of David Wills, executive secretary of
the Michigan Humane Society. Wills believes research can cause animals to
suffer pain, and the state Humane Society hopes to force researchers like
Malvin to quit experimenting on the relatively inexpensive dogs and cats they
get from municipal pounds.
Animal shelters are supposed to assure old or unwanted pets a peaceful
death — not a trip to a researcher’s lab, agrees Julie Morris, general
manager of the Humane Society of Huron Valley near Ann Arbor.
To medical researchers, Malvin and his laboratory’s sheep personify the
impending battle for control of research methods.
Traditionally, scientists have designed their own experiments, subject to
review by professional colleagues and inspection by federal and state
agencies.
Now, moderate humane societies like the Ann Arbor organization are
demanding that they be given a role in overseeing research techniques.
Motives questioned
Malvin questions the motives behind such demands, and says humane societies
are being dishonest when they say they only want to stop researchers from
using pound animals.
Morris claims, however, that the Huron Valley society recognizes the value
of research and only wants to curb abuses.
The Michigan Humane Society and 10 other animal rights groups — including
three anti-vivisectionist societies — have formed a coalition with the
Michigan Humane Society and have announced they will try to persuade state
legislators in Lansing to forbid the use of pound animals in research.
Malvin and his colleagues, in turn, claim the humane societies are
sentimentalizing a complex issue by focusing the debate on pets.
If animal welfarists succeed in forbidding the use of pound animals, they
will promote bills further limiting animal research, Malvin warns.
After the Massachusetts legislature passed such a law, more restrictive
bills were introduced, said Bennett Cohen, head of the U-M Unit for Laboratory
Animal Medicine.
Wills denied that the state society wants to ban all animal
experimentation.
In 1980, however, the Michigan Humane Society “News” said “the MHS is
against live animal experimentation, no matter where the animals are taken
from.”
Laboratory animal researchers now are circulating a document they say
reveals welfarists’ true intentions.
These “Notes from the 1984 Annual Conference of the Humane Society of the
United States” quote advice on tactics by society spokesman John McArdle.
“Never appear to be opposed to animal research,” McArdle is quoted as
saying. “Claim that your concern is only about the source of the animals
used.”
In a later interview, McArdle agreed the quote was accurate, and admitted
the second step in the strategy he recommends is to capitalize on a successful
“pound seizure” campaign by working “to pass laws to address other concerns
dealing with laboratory animals.”
That term — “pound seizure” — irks Cohen, a physiologist and veterinarian
who maintains that “it’s their term.”
The fact is: Michigan law does not allow scientists to “seize” animals
from local pounds.
Local governments may contract with one of several dealers to have dogs and
cats removed regularly from their pounds. Dealers sell such animals to
university and hospital laboratories.
“Technically, ‘pound seizure’ is just when a state mandates release,”
admitted Wills. “The public has made that a tag label for everything.”
Malvin argues that it is not the public, but animal welfarists, who have
popularized the term.
For example, the heading of the Huron Valley animal shelter’s official
statement on the subject uses “pound seizure.”
Emotions run high
The sheep’s low “baaaah” echoes through a corridor of the U-M Medical
Science Building as Malvin leads a Free Press photographer and reporter on a
tour.
A metal knob atop the sheep’s head controls a needle that has been
surgically implanted in the animal’s brain. By injecting drugs directly into
the its cerebral spinal fluid, Malvin explains, medical researchers can
induce — and study — high blood pressure in the sheep.
“We’ve made a few discoveries — we showed that a hormone system affects
blood pressure in a way we never thought of,” he said.
For many, however, the issue is not sheep. It is pets, and the possibility
that they may be used in experimenters’ laboratories.
‘”There’s mice, there’s rabbits, there’s other things besides household
pets,” one man argued at a Taylor City Council meeting in December.
The council debated and then voted to continue a contract with a Hodgins
Kennels, Inc., a Howell animal dealer who collects live and dead animals from
the Taylor pound. Hodgins sells some of the live cats and dogs to research
laboratories; others he kills.
It is nearly impossible to discuss the issue of animal rights versus
biomedical research without running into someone’s emotions.
Americans love their pets — especially dogs and cats. But they also love
their standard of living, including the promise of a longer life-span.
“Virtually every major medical advance of the last century has depended
upon research with animals,” says a brochure of the Foundation for Biomedical
Research.
But M.W. Fox, the national Humane Society’s scientific director, contends
that “since the causes of human diseases are primarily mental, social and
environmental, the use of animals as appropriate models must be seriously
questioned.”
Scientists could not disagree more.
An abbreviated list of medical achievements made possible through animal
research includes open-heart surgery, development of asthma medications,
kidney dialysis, cataract removal, hypertension medications, blood
transfusions, antibiotics and immunization against such former killers as
diphtheria, mumps, measles, smallpox and polio.
The statement that polio vaccine resulted from animal experiments bothers
Wills, who argues that polio vaccine was developed on “tissue,” not on
animals.
In response, Malvin repeats that key term: “Tissue. Tissues come from
animals. Many decades of animal research culminated in a solution that allows
us to make a vaccine. It’s sheer nonsense to pretend polio vaccine could have
been developed without the use of animals.”
New element in debate
The national Humane Society’s McArdle introduced a new element to the
debate when he proposed that brain-dead humans be used in place of animals in
live experimentation.
“It’s the appropriate animal, it’s the appropriate size,” said McArdle.
“Now, that’s something that we would be comfortable with, rather than an
animal that can suffer.”
After a moment of reflection, Morris said she agreed with McArdle that
brain-dead humans would be an alternative, but “there would have to be
informed consent of the person previously, or consent of the family. Clearly,
without that I would object.”
While Morris agrees that medical science has achieved impressive results,
the means — animal experimentation — needs closer monitoring.
“Nothing in the current laws applies to rats or mice,” Morris said, and
added, “nothing in current laws protects animals during experimentation.”
Morris is right, says Howard Rush, a U-M veterinarian — there are no laws
governing experiments on rats or mice.
But there are laws to protect animals during experiments, he said.
Thumbing through pages of the federal Animal Welfare Act, Rush read, “In
the case of a research facility, the program of adequate veterinary care
shall include the appropriate use of anesthetic, analgesic, or tranquilizing
drugs, when such use would be proper in the opinion of the attending
veterinarian . . .”
Still, Morris and Wills argue that videotapes stolen from a University of
Pennsylvania laboratory prove scientists failed to anesthetize animals. The
tapes prove the need for more regulation, Morris said.
Monkeys could be seen moving, which shows they were not given an
anesthetic, she said.
But according to an article by Thomas Gennarelli, chief of the University
of Pennsylvania head injury study, the animals were given sernalyn, an
anesthetic which “renders the animals incapable of feeling pain, but does not
render them comatose as other anesthetics do.” Thus, although they were
anesthetized, they could move.
Wills has a copy of the edited tapes. “They even shocked me,” he said.
But Malvin accuses animal welfarists of intentionally drawing a false
conclusion from the tapes.
“They know damned well those animals were anesthetized,” Malvin said.
Caption:
Illustration: PHOTO AL KAMUDA
Edition: METRO FINAL
Section: NWS
Page: 3A
Keywords: CONTROVERSY; ANIMAL; RESEARCH; TEST
Disclaimer:
2. RESEARCH OR CRUELTY? ANIMALS ALLOW US CHANCE TO SAVE LIFE
Sub-Head:
Byline: RICHARD MALVIN; JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Pub-Date: 2/14/1985
Memo: SHORTER VERSION RAN IN WAYNE WEST ZONE; ; ALSO RAN IN DOWNRIVER ZONE; ; SEE ALSO STORIES BY MORRIS AND THURTELL AND SIDEBAR
Correction:
Text: Should dog pounds provide unclaimed dogs and cats to scientists for use
in medical research?
Animal welfare groups say the answer is no.
Medical researchers strongly disagree.
Until recently, Humane Societies have carried on their political campaign
mainly at the level of local government.
Now, Humane Society officials are hoping state lawmakers will introduce and
enact a bill prohibiting the use of pound animals in experiments.
In this issue, the Free Press:
* Shows how communities in western Wayne and Washtenaw County dispose of
pound animals (this page).
* Presents two opposing views — an animal welfare spokeswoman discusses
why she wants a ban on using pound animals for research, and a University of
Michigan Medical School professor explains why he fears such a measure would
retard medical progress (this page).
* Provides an in-depth examination of how the opposing sides view the issue
(page 3A).
Richard Malvin is a professor at the University of Michigan Medical
School, where he has conducted research into kidney physiology and
hypertension since 1956. Malvin, who earned a doctorate in physiology at the
University of Cincinnati, is president of the Michigan Society for Medical
Research and says he believes animal welfare groups like the Humane Society
“are misinforming the public — perhaps not deliberately — about the
humaneness of biomedical research.” Here are Malvin’s main arguments against
a ban on using pound animals for research, as told to Free Press Staff Writer
Joel Thurtell.
The purpose of almost all so-called animal welfarists and
anti-vivisectionists is to prevent biomedical research using animals.
That was the tack they took for 100 years. It was a frivolous attack.
Nobody in the public was going to stand for that, so they switched it — “No
we’re not really that crazy; we’re just going to stop using pets.”
Pets. Now that has a little more emotional appeal. Then you can show
beautiful pictures of puppies and so on.
In Michigan, about 500,000 dogs a year are killed in pounds. About 10,000
animals a year are killed in biomedical research.
To prohibit the use of pound animals would set back research enormously.
It would make it extremely costly to perform our research, which would slow
it down and make life worse for everybody today.
YOU DON’T give any thought to your child getting polio. My brother died of
it. Now, I can tell you that’s a tragic thing.
Polio . . . doesn’t happen, and measles and whooping cough and tuberculosis
— the TB sanitariums are closed.
Biomedical research has brought us where we are today …(and it’s) all
due to animal experimentation. How can you deny it?
The list goes on: Children who have the most terrible congenital disease,
they’re fixed up — they live normal lives.
It’s astounding. Every year 120,000 Americans are saved from premature
death from coronary heart disease by coronary bypass surgery or valve
replacement. The valves are taken from pigs.
All the dog vaccines and cat vaccines have been developed using animals.
Any time a person brings his or her animal to a veterinarian and receives
treatment or a vaccine that animal is the beneficiary of animal research.
I had a disc removed, but the fact is that that surgery long ago was worked
out using animals. Surgeons learn by using animals. You can’t do it on a
computer, you can’t do it on anything else.
Those animals are anesthetized. You give them an anesthetic and they go to
sleep — and they don’t wake up.
THE ALTERNATIVE is that the pound kills the animal.
Many (animal rights people) oppose biomedical research because they are
strict vegetarians. They are morally opposed to the use of animals for any
purpose.
Well, OK, I respect that. It’s a view I don’t happen to share and I don’t
think society shares.
In addition, while they don’t eat meat, I’m sure their children were
vaccinated against polio and that if they have diabetes, they’re taking
insulin, all of which are products of animal research.
I get phone calls from total strangers telling me they’re upset that I kill
dogs. They literally threaten to kill me. That’s not humane, regardless of
what you think about animals.
The claims of the anti-vivisectionists are quite wild, including a lovely
quote from a debate I had with a spokesman for the Humane Society of the
United States who suggested we use brain-dead humans, rather than animals.
THE FACT is that the anti-vivisectionists can point to a few cases of
inappropriate use of animals over the last 30 or 40 years. If in just two
decades they can find a half a dozen cases which they believe are violations
of ethics, that’s phenomenally good.
You mean to tell me that pet owners are that good? No way, no way.
When a (physiology) researcher submits a paper for publication, it goes to
an editor, and then it goes out to a minimum of two other people for review.
If there is a question about humane treatment of animals, it’s the end of the
paper. No matter what the scientific merit, that paper is rejected. It will
never be published, and it becomes known that he violated the guiding rules of
the American Physiological Society. His professional career is ruined.
In essence, no undue pain can be inflicted on an animal, unless there is
extraordinarily good reason. Suppose you were studying pain, and people do
have intractable pain. If one can demonstrate that the reason for the
experiment is really valid, the chances of getting good, useful information
are excellent, then you can inflict some level of pain on an animal. You
can’t keep them in torture . . .
That’s very, very different from saying, well, I’m going to cut into the
kidney, I don’t have to use anesthetic. Like hell. All surgical procedures
must be done exactly as they’re done in a hospital. Without looking under the
sheets you would be hard pressed to know whether it’s a human or an animal.
THERE ARE legal restrictions, and we are not lawbreakers.
We can’t do things that the ordinary citizen would go to jail for. All
animal facilities must be accredited and there are federal and state
regulations. The federal and state departments of agriculture come
periodically without warning to inspect the facilities. If you can’t meet the
code, it’s not accredited, you lose your grants and the institution is out of
business.
Our facility (the university’s Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine) has 12
veterinarians on call. That’s by law, but it’s also by choice — we would do
it even if there weren’t a law.
If surgery is required, animals must recover in a particular recovery room
just as humans. If there is any reason to suspect that post-surgery will be
painful, they are given pain-relieving drugs.
We are almost entirely dependent on pound dogs. We get about 2,000 dogs
and cats a year. The cost is about $35 a dog. We use about 500 cats a year.
If we had to raise our own, the cost would be up to $1,000 an animal. That
does not include capital expense of building some facility for breeding and
raising them for a year.
How do you want your research dollars to go? Do you want them to go to
research or do you want them to go for buying animals?
The anti-vivisectionists are really saying that they want the money to go
towards buying animals. If it costs me $1,000 to buy a dog instead of $35,
that’s $965 in money that is not going to research. If I use just 10 dogs a
year, that’s almost a $10,000 difference.
Caption:
Illustration: PHOTO COLOR AND PHOTO AL KAMUDA
Edition: METRO FINAL
Section: NWS
Page: 1A
Keywords: ANIMAL; RESEARCH; TEST; CONTROVERSY
Disclaimer:
3. RESEARCH OR CRUELTY? POUND NOT A PLACE TO FIND GUINEA PIGS
Sub-Head:
Byline: JULIE MORRIS; JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Pub-Date: 2/14/1985
Memo: ALSO RAN IN WAYNE WEST AND DOWNRIVER ZONES; ; SEE ALSO STORIES BY MALVIN AND THURTELL AND SIDEBAR
Correction:
Julie Morris opposes the use of pound animals for medical research. Morris
is general manager of the Humane Society of Huron Valley near Ann Arbor. After
earning a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Michigan State University, Morris
quit her graduate studies in psychobiology because, she says, animals were
being used unnecessarily in research. “We are not opposed to using animals for
food, research or clothing,” she says. “We are opposed to using pets for
research.”
Two views expressed by Morris — that videotapes stolen from University of
Pennsylvania researchers depict mistreatment of experimental animals and that
current law does not regulate treatment of animals during an operation — have
been disputed by University of Michigan scientists. Here are some arguments
Morris offered to Free Press Staff Writer Joel Thurtell.
First, I’m going to distinguish between the use of animals in research and
the use of pound animals in research. We as a Humane Society have a pretty
moderate position on research.
Our goal is not to eliminate the use of animals in research. We recognize
that animals play a very important role in research — they provide a lot of
societal benefits that we wouldn’t have without it. We feel that the animals
are used and they will be used, and that’s not a point with us.
We feel that the focus of the debate should be on the nature of the
research — not on the use of animals.
For one thing, we think current animal control laws should be tightened.
Nothing in the current laws apply to rats or mice — there are no laws
governing them right now.
Nothing in current laws protects animals during experimentation. There are
some stipulations for treatment before and after experimentation, but there
are no stipulations during experimentation.
THAT CAN LEAD to problems with adequate provision (for giving) the animals
anesthetic or analgesia that is needed for the animal right then.
Recently the Animal Liberation Front raided the University of Pennsylvania
labs, where they were doing a long-time head injury research. They confiscated
about 70 hours worth of videotapes. An organization called PETA (People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals) shortened the tapes to a 29-30 minute
version. Their (University of Pennsylvania) protocol that was submitted to
the National Institutes of Health said the animals would be under anesthesis
(and) they would be properly treated. There’s all sorts of clips in the tape
where the researchers say, “this sucker’s awake; oh, too bad.”
You can see the animals struggling.
An animal that’s under anesthesia would not do that. The animals were
clearly conscious.
Some animal models are inappropriate. There’s research going on now — rat
alcoholics. Rats are not alcoholics. They don’t drink. It’s a disease. An
appropriate model, on the other hand, would be something like arterial
sclerosis in pigs, which is almost identical to arterial sclerosis in humans.
That’s very comparable.
But it’s not always very comparable. (For example,) models for autism in
animals. Autism is a very complex psychological, social and physiological
disease and doesn’t necessarily correlate, nor can the data really be
extrapolated to make sense.
I THINK, also, emphasis on the care and handling — I think some of the
care and handling standards are very minimal. I think U-M exceeds many of
these.
I’m not really that familiar with that many universities. I would say the
University of Michigan is probably the highest quality in the state.
There should be animal subject review committees, made up of university
members, researchers, as well as university members who are from outside
departments and representatives from animal welfare organizations to review
(research) protocols and be a part of that system.
Despite what (U-M professor Richard) Malvin tries to say that we do, we are
not out to eliminate the use of animals in research.
(Malvin’s estimates suggest that banning the use of pound dogs would drive
the price per animal from $35 to $1,000.) Those are wrong. It’s not going to
increase that much or anything like that. It’s about three times or four times
more expensive.
There really isn’t a clear indication that pound animals are cheaper in the
long run than purpose-bred (animals raised specfically for research) animals.
Certainly the purchase price is cheaper for a pound animal than a purpose-bred
animal, but there is a lot of literature where there is increased mortality
rates from pound animals versus purpose-bred animals and decreased
reliability.
PERHAPS IN the short term the elimination of the use of pound animals might
slow things down. It’s not going to stop research.
Basically, we feel it is inappropriate for an animal shelter to release
pound animals. Our logic is that an animal shelter should be seen as a
suffering-free sanctuary where at the very least the animal is guaranteed a
painless death.
There really isn’t very much systematic data on it, (but) it’s very
strongly felt in the humane movement that people will not bring animals to
shelters where they feel the animal may be released for research.
When we release the animal to research, it may be treated humanely, it may
not. It introduces an unknown factor.
Pound release is here because America has a very large (pet)
overpopulation problem. We work to stop overpopulation.
We have a low cost spay-neuter clinic. We have cut down the population that
we see at the shelter by 60 percent in the last six years.
WE FEEL that the use of animals in research is a reactive solution. Because
there is a problem, they’re here, let’s use them because they’re cheap,
they’re available.
It’s a tragedy, overpopulation. (Research) just exploits the tragedy. It
doesn’t give you any incentive to fight it.
Most of the dogs we see here are pets. Approximately 50 percent of the
animals we see are not strays — they came because their owners could no
longer keep them.
We rarely ever see a feral animal — an animal that is not a pet.
We got 9,509 animals in 1984. (There were) 4,942 dogs, 3,802 cats, 765
wildlife.
Of the dogs, 55.5 percent were stray. (Of the) cats, 38 percent were stray.
(Of the total), 5,308 were euthanized, 1,823 were adopted (and) 871 were
returned to owner.
An animal that has been raised in the lab — it’s hardier, it’s used to the
laboratory conditions.
We use animals in research because we admit that there are certain
similarities between us and animals. If we’re going to admit that there are
similarities, we also need to admit that we have certain obligations.
Caption:
Illustration: PHOTO COLOR AND PHOTO AL KAMUDA
Edition: METRO FINAL
Section: NWS
Page: 1A
Keywords: ANIMAL; RESEARCH; TEST; CONTROVERSY
Disclaimer:
