Rats Know What They Know

The history of bigotry is the history of false claims about the superiority of a particular group or the inferiority of another. The arguments, when rationality is claimed as a basis, always hinge on the claim that we (historically, men, white men, white men owning property, Americans, Europeans, the rich, or just humans) have characteristics and sensibilities that they (historically, women, people of color, or different ethnicity, religion, or language, the poor, mentally retarded people, people with disabilities, or just animals) do not.

In the case of the human/nonhuman animal dichotomy, this has traditionally taken the form of various claims about so called "human characteristics." These have been things like using tools, making tools, emotions like grief and joy, self-sacrifice and altruism, and as often as such characteristics have been proposed as the reason killing or hurting a human is illegal but hurting an animals is sport, a livelihood, our culture, or science, the proclaimed justification has turned out to be present in species other than Homo sapiens.

Recently, the gatekeeper has been something called metacognition, or knowing what ones knows. But even here, the wall has been breached as Foote and Crystal report below. Worse news for the defenders of human bigotry, this "human" characteristic isn't being found in just other primates, but in rodents as well.

About the only arguments left for those who defend the claim that we have some right to hurt members of other species are religious or might-makes-right sorts of claims.

Metacognition in the rat.
Foote AL, Crystal JD.
Curr Biol. 2007 Mar 20;17(6):551-5. Epub 2007 Mar 8.

The ability to reflect on one's own mental processes, termed metacognition, is a defining feature of human existence. Consequently, a fundamental question in comparative cognition is whether nonhuman animals have knowledge of their own cognitive states. Recent evidence suggests that people and nonhuman primates but not less "cognitively sophisticated" species are capable of metacognition. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that rats are capable of metacognition--i.e., they know when they do not know the answer in a duration-discrimination test. Before taking the duration test, rats were given the opportunity to decline the test. On other trials, they were not given the option to decline the test. Accurate performance on the duration test yielded a large reward, whereas inaccurate performance resulted in no reward. Declining a test yielded a small but guaranteed reward. If rats possess knowledge regarding whether they know the answer to the test, they would be expected to decline most frequently on difficult tests and show lowest accuracy on difficult tests that cannot be declined. Our data provide evidence for both predictions and suggest that a nonprimate has knowledge of its own cognitive state.

My Enlightening Meeting with Lama Lhundub Sopa

The Four Immeasurables

May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes,

May all sentient beings be free of suffering and its causes,

May all sentient beings never be separated from bliss without suffering,

May all sentient beings be in equanimity, free of bias, attachment and anger.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, an incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion, is coming to town, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to generate some news coverage of the 2000 hidden monkeys suffering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison since his Holiness is a big supporter of the labs.

Upon hearing that His Holiness is an admirer of scientists who burn monkeys’ brains with acid and then try to frighten them with snakes, scientists, and bigger monkeys, most people express either disbelief or shock. After all, he is the leader of the Tibetan government in exile, a theocracy based on a set of profound teachings that urge us to harm no sentient being, to dispel all the misery in the world, to recognize that all beings are as precious as our mothers, and to embrace the ideas captured in the Four Immeasurables.

Here are a couple photos of the Buddha of Compassion being wooed by Richard Davidson and hob-knobbing with Ned Kalin.

So, since he’s coming to town to bless a new temple being built by one of his old Lama friends and to speak on campus, I thought that this might be an opportunity to call attention to his true nature and get the monkeys some press coverage.

The new temple is being built at local Buddhist monastery named Deer Park, after the park where Siddhārtha Gautama, the historical Buddha, taught his first lessons sometime between 500 BCE and 400 CE.

The monastery is under the control of one of the Dalai Lama’s contemporaries, Lama Lhundub Sopa, or Geshe Sopa, to use his Buddhist academic title. The Deer Park website says:

Geshe Sopa is recognized worldwide as one of the great living spiritual masters of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is particularly renowned for maintaining the high standards of scholarly learning while personally embodying the qualities of humility, tolerance and compassion. Though trained in his youth in one of the most rigorous Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, Geshe Sopa’s life work has been centered in the heartland of America. Here, Geshe Sopa has spent forty years inspiring all those he meets—as a Buddhist monk, a university professor, a committed peacemaker, a consummate teacher and as an extraordinary human being.

So I thought, maybe, just maybe, that Geshe Sopa, personally embodying the quality of compassion, might not know that the Dalai Lama was speaking out in support of vivisection. I thought that, maybe, he would be concerned for the animals suffering in the labs, and that before standing in front of his gate with a protest sign calling attention to the Buddha of Compassion’s dispassion for the monkeys, that I ought to go see him.So, I called and made an appointment.

First, I spoke with a woman named Ani Jampa – an American by her East Coast accent, but I never met her in person. I think she was cooking something as we spoke on the phone; I thought I heard dishes clinking and she seemed a bit distracted.

I explained to her who I was and the reason I wanted to speak with Geshe Sopa. I didn’t discuss my possible protest, but was clear about my concern over the Dalai Lama’s support of vivisection and particularly the Dalai Lama’s relationship with UW monkey vivisectors. She argued a bit in his defense, and explained that His Holiness didn’t have a strong association with Deer Park and that Geshe Sopa wouldn’t voice an opinion about the Dalai Lama’s opinions. She agreed to set up an appointment for me.

Later I got a call from the Venerable George C. Churinoff who asked me to send him some substantiation of my concerns. He also wanted to argue with me a bit about the Dalai Lama’s position and, as Ani Jampa had done, told me not to get my hopes up. He also recommended that I bring a gift for Geshe Sopa.

So, I sent Venerable George this email.

I had some apprehension before my meeting with Geshe Sopa. Though I’ve read a goodly number of books on Buddhism and had a personal practice for a few years, I surfed the World Wide Web and read many pages discussing the role of compassion. There is near uniform lip service regarding the fundamental idea that we should have genuine and meaningful concern for all beings.

I hoped that Venerable George and Ani Jampa’s typically human-centered compassion were just expressions of some lingering attachment to the duality of human/animal suffering, and that Geshe Sopa, embodying compassion, would have a more enlightened view.

Venerable George met me in the driveway wearing his maroon and orange Tibetan robes, and escorted me into Geshe Sopa’s home, a nice ranch furnished in a tasteful Eastern décor. It was pretty much what one might expect. I removed my shoes and followed George to Geshe Sopa’s room. This seems to be his Tibetan retreat from the real world. The walls are covered with thangkas, a photo of the Dalai Lama, there was a scent of incense in the room. Geshe Sopa held his audience with me from his daybed. I sat on a chair at the foot of the bed, and venerable George sat on the floor beside the bed and occasionally helped him find his glasses or an underlined quotation in a book, marked apparently, in anticipation of my visit.

I expressed my appreciation for his willingness to talk to me. I gave him a copy of Compassionate Action, a book edited by a dear friend, and explained its personal significance to me. He and George seemed familiar with the author Chatral Rinpoche, which I thought might be a good thing since he is a well-known animal supporter.

I explained the situation with the monkeys and why it seems contrary to the basic tenets of Buddha’s teachings to promote the careers of scientists experimenting on animals. I talked a little about Davidson and Kalin’s work, the Dalai Lama’s support of Davidson and Deer Park’s support of Davidson. Of all the documentation I had sent to George, he had passed none on to Geshe Sopa.

After listening to me, and to George, who had obviously read some of the details in the papers I had sent him, Geshe Sopa began talking about the difference between "Hinayana" and Mahayana Buddhism. I was never clear to me why he was so intent on explaining the differences, but he made it clear that he feels that "Hinayana" is selfish and that Mahayana is compassionate.

Hinayana means inferior vehicle; Mahayana means great vehicle. Hinayana is considered a pejorative term, coined by Mahayanists (like Tibetan and Zen) to disparage Theravadan Buddhism, considered by some scholars to be the earlier more orthodox form of Buddhism.

Geshe Sopa told me some stories that he must have felt were germane to my concerns and would be enlightening to me. Two of these, George had told me during our earlier phone conversation, but I listened to them again with an open mind and heart, thinking that Geshe Sopa’s retelling might be more illuminating than George’s had been.

The first story had to do with someone who was bitten on the finger by a venomous snake. In order to save his life, to stop the poison from spreading, a doctor had to chop off his finger. Thus, doing harm is sometimes appropriate.

Then he told the story of five or six rich merchants on a boat. One of them conceives of a plan to kill all the others and steal their riches. Someone else on the boat happens to be the Buddha in an earlier life, not yet fully enlightened, but very adept. He sees into the plotter’s mind and knows that the only way to save everyone else on the boat is to kill the one bad man, and does. Geshe Sopa thought that the negative effect of doing this was probably outweighed by the positive effect so, in the final weighing, Buddha was not harmed by murdering the bad man.

He told me another story, essentially the same as the one above, but this time with one hundred or so people at risk, and again, claimed that the murder of one who plotted the murder of the rest was a justified act and would probably not condemn one to eons of hell.

He repeatedly pointed out the fact that we do not allow everyone to do all the things that they believe would make them happy, especially in the case of rapists, murderers, and thieves, and that we even take away their freedom and lock them away, and yet we don’t think poorly of the police who do these things on our behalf.

His point in all of these stories, which he repeated many times, was that when we see someone doing something that appears to be bad, that it might not be. We might not fully understand the situation. The Buddhist corollary, he explained, is that, from the perspective of how this affects the person committing the act, it is primarily the intent that matters.

Geshe Sopa also said that one human is worth a thousand animals. If thousands of animals are harmed, and only a few humans receive some benefit, then that’s ok.

I had to struggle to get any questions in during Geshe Sopa’s discourse, and even George seemed a little unsatisfied with some of his answers. He asked Geshe Sopa whether it would be right for the Chinese government to experiment on Tibetans in order to study some disease. I’m not sure we got a straight answer to this question.

Geshe Sopa raised his voice and became pretty agitated a few times, especially when I tried to tell him a little more about what was going on at the university. “Don’t tell me about universities! I know all about universities!”

The way I understood him, and I asked him whether my understanding was right, and he said it was, we can never judge someone else’s actions. When I asked him about the university destroying the 628 primate experimentation videotapes in an apparent effort to stop the public from learning what is going on in the labs, he said that it was probably necessary because the public wouldn’t understand what they were seeing.

When I asked him about J. Marion Sims, the father of American gynecology, who experimented on enslaved women, he said he thought that it was justified because more women were helped.

As I was leaving, I left two brochures and a copy of Masserman on the foot of his bed. He said, “Take those with you. I won’t read them.” I refused, but George picked them up.

On the way out, as I was putting my shoes back on, I heard some birds. “George, do I hear birds?”

“Oh yes. I think they are parakeets. There is also a tank of fish.”

George walked me to my car. We talked a bit more. When I mentioned the growing body of scientific literature concerning animal mind and the implications for the monkeys living for years in a stainless steel cubical, he said, regarding the notion that animals have minds anything like humans, "This is not the Buddhist position," or something to that effect. He seemed to take refuge in the Dogma.

I think I'll go buy some poster board.

The Rhesus Genome

As of April 14, 2007, Google reported that there were 199 postings regarding the news that the Macaca mulatta genone had been sequenced. Typical headlines:

Scientists Map DNA of Rhesus Monkeys
Scientists Map DNA of Research Monkeys
Macaque Genome Sequenced
Monkey Gene Map May Improve Drug Testing
Scientists map rhesus monkey
Macaque genome analysis will help find human disease genes

The original paper that all the news outlets were reporting on was "Rhesus Macaque Genome Sequencing and Analysis Consortium." Science, 316 . 222 - 234 (2007).

Of all the articles in the popular press, I think the Associated Press piece was the most telling.

I don't know how long the link will remain active, so here are a few excerpts:

These fuzzy animals are key to testing the safety of many medicines, and understanding such diseases as AIDS, and the new research will help scientists finally be sure when they're a good stand-in for humans.

"The thing we're all fascinated with is what makes us different from these animals who are so close to us," said Dr. Richard Gibbs of the Baylor College of Medicine, who led a team of more than 170 scientists that collaborated on the project....

Among the most intriguing discoveries so far: a list of diseases where the same genetic mutation that makes people ill seems normal for the macaques....

But right away, the work raises some important biomedical questions, because rhesus macaques are ubiquitous in medical research. Most vaccines and many drugs are tested in the monkeys before ever reaching people. And they're used as models of many human diseases, most notably the AIDS virus.

"As models, we expect them to behave like us," noted Baylor's Gibbs.

Yet consider some of the differences found so far:

About one in 14,000 babies is born with PKU, or phenylketonuria, meaning their bodies can't process a protein found in most foods called phenylalanine. Without treatment, PKU causes mental retardation. But in macaques, the gene defect that causes PKU seems to cause no harm, suggesting they may somehow compensate in a way people can't.

The researchers found a list of such mutations, from ones linked with cystic fibrosis to blood diseases, that are bad news for people but seem normal in the monkeys. Most involved metabolic disorders that in turn can harm the brain, a link Gibbs found particularly compelling.

The monkeys had triple the number of genes as people to do run one arm of the immune system. That raises immediate questions about how they react in vaccine or AIDS research. "It would make sense that a comprehensive knowledge of their immune machinery should be a part of those studies," Gibbs said.

On the other hand, macaques had far fewer of a family of cancer-related genes than either humans or chimps.

There is a claim in the article attributed to lead scientist, Dr. Richard Gibbs of the Baylor College of Medicine. He said that "the work has importance for the animals, too because knowing their genetic makeup should cut the number of monkeys needed in many biomedical experiments."

Now, Dr. Gibbs must be a very bright guy, but it doesn't appear that he has much of an insight into the disturbing and dark world of primate vivisection.

Its a near certainty that he's about as wrong as can be on this point. Dollars to donuts, the publication of the rhesus genome will increase demand for these already exploited animals. They are in a no win situation: If there is a similaity in a part of the human and rhesus genome, this will be claimed as an excuse to experiment on them; if there is a difference, this will be claimed as an excuse to experiment on them.

The only way out of this morass of torture and suffering is to acknowledge that some of our cognitive similarities have moral implications and that any non-religious-based consistent moral position must acknowledge that we should stop hurting them for the same reasons that we should not hurt each other.

Funny Rat Tumors

I occasionally read the vivisection trade magazines just to see what the industry is telling itself. You can glean some interesting tidbids now and then.

I was recently given a new issue of one of these magazines, Lab Manager and discovered a featured cartoon strip named Lab Bratz. And wouldn't you just know it, the writer is a lab manager at a lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The episode in Lab Manager caught my eye because it it was so offensive:


The on-line color original is here.

The frame of the live cow in the giant blender is of course just a comedic device, and it isn't what struck me as sufficiently offensive to write this. What caught my eye were the topic and dialog:

Fat dumb scientist: "Do you always grow your cells in bovine serum?"

Bald dull scientist: "Usually... Why?"

FDS: "Well, we have freezers full of the stuff. I was wondering where it all comes from."

BDS: "There are things man was not meant to know."

Cow in blender: "Moooo?"

The funny reality behind what we are not supposed to know is that bovine serum is usually fetal bovine serum. Here's an on-line ad:

High Quality Fetal Bovine Serums

Available in USDA or US Origin-See full list for pricing

IFBS- USDA Fetal Bovine Serum $165 per 500 ml

Please call today for a free 50 ml sample.

The production of this material (especially in light of the availablity of human serum and artificial serum) is ethically controversial. See for instance:

The use of fetal bovine serum: ethical or scientific problem?

Jochems CE, van der Valk JB, Stafleu FR, Baumans V.
Altern Lab Anim. 2002 Mar-Apr;30(2):219-27.

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is a common component of animal cell culture media. It is harvested from bovine fetuses taken from pregnant cows during slaughter. FBS is commonly harvested by means of a cardiac puncture without any form of anaesthesia. Fetuses are probably exposed to pain and/or discomfort, so the current practice of fetal blood harvesting is inhumane. Apart from moral concerns, several scientific and technical problems exist with regard to the use of FBS in cell culture. Efforts should be made to reduce the use of FBS or, preferably, to replace it with synthetic alternatives.

The entire paper -- providing more than you may want to know about this issue -- is available here. This probably isn't a funny topic to anyone other than those deadened to suffering in the labs.

So I skimmed through all the strips. Episodes 21-26; 44-50; 71; 73; 79; 87; 93-98 (funny rats with tumors); and 101 all feature rats. Episodes 93-98 seem particularly callous.

I can just imagine these clipped and tacked to the bulletin boards in labs around the country: "Man, that rat suffering with the tumors is just so funny."

These people are certifiably ill.

Warfarin Use in Men Defended by UW Monkey Vivisector

UW Vivisector Debunks Human Epidemiological Warning with Monkey Data.

J Bone Miner Res. 2007 Feb 12; [Epub ahead of print]

Vitamin K Deficiency From Long-term Warfarin Anticoagulation Does Not Alter Skeletal Status in Male Rhesus Monkeys.
Binkley N, Krueger D, Engelke J, Suttie J.

Vitamin K (K) inadequacy may cause bone loss. Thus, K deficiency induced by anticoagulants (e.g., warfarin) may be an osteoporosis risk factor. The skeletal impact of long-term warfarin anticoagulation was evaluated in male monkeys. No effect on bone density or markers of skeletal turnover was observed. This study suggests that warfarin-induced K deficiency does not have skeletal effects.

Ok. Let me be clear from the start: I’m not claiming that Neil Binkley et al. are shills for the University of Wisconsin; I’m just saying that it looks like they are.

Just the facts mam, just the facts:

This is what the (always accurate) online encyclopedia Wikipedia has to say (or did say on April 8, 2007)about warfarin.

The identity of the anticoagulant substance in moldy sweet clover remained a mystery until 1940 when Karl Paul Link and his student Harold Campbell, chemists working at the University of Wisconsin, determined that it was the coumarin derivative 4-hydroxycoumarin. Over the next few years, numerous similar chemicals were found to have the same anticoagulant properties. The first of these to be widely commercialized was dicoumarol, patented in 1941. Link continued working on developing more potent coumarin-based anticoagulants for use as rodent poisons, resulting in warfarin in 1948. (The name warfarin stems from the acronym WARF, for Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation + the ending -arin indicating its link with coumarin.) Warfarin was first registered for use as a rodenticide in the US in 1952; although it was developed by Link, the WARF financially supported the research and was granted the patent.
…
After an incident in 1951, where a naval enlisted man unsuccessfully attempted suicide with warfarin and recovered fully, studies began in the use of warfarin as a therapeutic anticoagulant. It was found to be generally superior to dicoumarol, and in 1954 was approved for medical use in humans. A famous early patient prescribed warfarin was Dwight Eisenhower, president of the USA, subsequent to his heart attack in 1955.

So, the patent to warfarin is owned by WARF.

In 2006, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis reported:

"We did a retrospective study of Medicare records for about 15,000 patients hospitalized with atrial fibrillation, and we identified fractures related to osteoporosis," says lead author Brian Gage, M.D., associate professor of medicine and medical director of Barnes-Jewish Hospital's Blood Thinner Clinic. "Our analysis showed that long-term use of warfarin—longer than one year— led to a 25 percent increase in the incidence of fracture."

So, compare the studies’ designs and results:

Epidemiological study of 15,000 humans by researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis: “[M]en in the study who took warfarin for more than a year had a 63 percent higher incidence of fracture than men who did not take the blood thinner.”

Laboratory study of 20 adult male rhesus monkeys by researchers at the University of Wisconsin: “Long-term W[arfarin] therapy does not have adverse skeletal consequences in primates with high intakes of calcium and vitamin D.”

The data from the Wisconsin study was gathered in the late 1990s. It’s just a coincidence, I’m sure, that researchers from the institution holding the patent to warfarin chose to publish their report: “Long-term Warfarin Anticoagulation Does Not Alter Skeletal Status in Male Rhesus Monkeys” on the heals of a study by researchers at a different institution suggesting that long-term use of warfarin may impose a significant risk of bone fracture in men.

I’m sure this is all just a coincidence, after all, the UW, Madison researchers were clear: “All authors have no conflicts of interest relevant to this work.”


One final thing. One of the monkeys used in the Wisconsin study was monkey Rhao45. At the beginning of the study and at its end, Rhao45 underwent biopsies of a rib and the iliac crest (at the top of his hip bone.) (He was eventually killed after more experimentation on his brain and being repeatedly rectally infected with SIV, but that’s another story.)

Following the second biopsy, the wound over his hip developed full-thickness skin necrosis and took over a month and a half to really begin to heal. But hey, at least we know that, unlike men, male monkeys might not be prone to bone loss due to long-term use of warfarin. Yipee.

The Disturbing Case of Dr. Ei Terasawa

From Madison's Hidden Monkeys, a Primate Freedom Project:

The Disturbing Case of Dr. Ei Terasawa

Laboratory notebook notation of 1/7/99 (found by USDA) – "Sometime after midnight, the pump tubing slipped out of the aCSF. Therefore, tubing has been running dry and pumping air into the monkey until 6:40. Judging from the volume of aCSF in the tube, it happened shortly after midnight." Dr. Terasawa finds this entry to be unexplainable, since she does not experiment on animals overnight.” [aCSF = artificial cerebrospinal fluid. PFP]

Christine Parks DVM, Ph.D. and Amanda Crumbaugh
July 10, 2003

Much more...

Empathy in Mice

I was recently talking with a friend and mentioned that in some situations mice show empathy for each other. She was astounded and thought that, maybe, if more people knew this that their attitudes about animals might improve.

I hope she's right. Here's a link to a report on and a discussion of "Social Modulation of Pain as Evidence for Empathy in Mice." (Langford DJ, et al. Science 30 June 2006: Vol. 312. no. 5782, pp. 1967 - 1970.)

Positive Emotional Experiences in Mice

An April 4, 2007, University of Wisconsin news release quotes a researcher's assertion that mice have richly integrated behaviors, vocalizations, and positive emotional experiences:

"They like company. That's the point," says Garet Lahvis, of the gregarious strain of mouse.... A young mouse will seek social interaction and avoid isolation. The social life of these animals is a rich integration of behavior, vocalizations and positive emotional experience."

Actually, most of the mice used by the UW and labs throughout the world have very dark emotional experiences, and we don't need peer reviewed papers to understand why.

The actual paper is available here.

Lead author, grad student Jules Panksepp, must be related to Jaak Panksepp. I wonder if ethical blindness is genetic?

A Slow News Day at the UW Vivisection Labs

The University of Wisconsin-Madison news advisory begins like this:

With rat genome as guide, human breast cancer risk refined
April 2, 2007

by Terry Devitt

It almost sounds like real news until one thinks about the claims:

Combing the genomes of the rat and the human, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found swaths of genetic code that can be used to assess the risk of human breast cancer.

Well, not exactly. The report goes on to say that the mutations looked at by the rsearchers occur in less than 1 percent of women and are thus too rare to be used effectively for breast cancer screening. And even in this tiny slice of the population, only 19% of those with the mutation will develop breast cancer. This is a breakthrough worthy of a press release?

The report claims:

The rat model for breast cancer, developed by Gould's lab during the past decade, provides a unique window to the molecular levers that influence disease. The rat is a good model for breast cancer because the disease manifests itself in the animal in much the same way it occurs in humans.

Wow! The rat model of breast cancer was developed by this researcher's lab over the past decade. Except, it wasn't. Mammary tumors in rats have been failing as predictive and useful models of human breast cancer for a very long time.

Maybe the UW-Madison spin doctors had a quota to fill. Here's some better information about breast cancer research.

Courting Cash-Tajima-ushi Risks Deadly Return to 1918.

Based on the cover story from the Winter 2006 On Wisconsin, the UW-Madison alumni magazine, it appears that Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka walks on water.

And that, the story goes, is why the university has committed to building him a (currently estimated) $11.4 million dollar BSL-3-Ag lab, with saftey features just a sneeze less rigorous than those found in a BSL-4 lab like the one the UW is trying to establish in the bucolic Town of Dunn, just a few minutes from Madison. More on that here and here.

The 8-page article explains:

What most excites Kawaoka -- and what most complicates the job's completion -- is that the building will include a so-called BSL-3-Ag lab, a highly secure space designed to allow researchers to work safely on life-threatening biological agents. BSL-3-Ag, which stands for Biosafety level 3- Agriculture, denotes the second-highest level on the federal government's biosafety regulations and is prescribed for work with viruses that would pose health threats if they escaped the lab. Since no facility of this standard currently exists on campus, Kawaoka has had to ship some of his research projects -- including one to build and evaluate a replica of the 1918 Spanish flu virus -- to a lab in Canada. (p 26.)

Hum? If this is true, would someone please explain to me the implication of the minutes taken during closed session of the November 2, 2005, University of Wisconsin-Madison Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC). And the minutes of the following meeting.

One of the safeguards mentioned in the On Wisconsin article ["Flight Lessons." Michelle Penn. On Wisconsin. Winter 2006. pp 20-27.] is that:

Every bit of air circulating inside will be filtered and purified. Every drop of water used will be boiled and cooled before entering the sewer system.

But the minutes of the IBC make it clear that the Kawaoka lab is hosed down and the water just goes down the drain. One of the improvements required by the IBC prior to approving his use of the reconstructed 1918 flu virus was that the lab had to "treat the drain regularly with disinfectant..." That's comforting.

Multiple questions arise from these apparent contradictions.

1. If what Kawaoka is doing in his lab is safe, why does he need a new lab?

2. If the new lab is needed in order to make his research safe, why is he being allowed to use the Spanish flu and the Ebola virues in his current lab already?

3. Will one of the IBC members or someone from Kawaoka's lab write to On Wisconsin to clarify these seeming and presumably important contradictions?

One of the university's arguments for encouraging Homeland Security to build its new BSL-4 lab in the Town of Dunn is that the facility will be of use to UW researchers. Having these two labs in such close proximity is likely to increase the liklihood of conveying very dangerous disease agents back and forth, increasing the liklihood of possible public exposure due to an unanticipated accident.

The bottom line for wanting to keep Kawaoka in Madison is money. He brings in well-funded federal grants and has a proven potential for producing patentable products.

Here are his 2006 awards:

Kawaoka, Yoshihiro:

1R01AI069274-01 Pandemic Potential of H5N1 Influenza Viruses $506,275

5R01AI044386-08 Molecular Mechanisms of Influenza Pandemics $415,176

5R01AI047446-07 Influenza Virus Assembly $394,874

5R01AI055519-04 Molecular Basis for Ebola Virus Pathogenicity $347,445

Considering that 48% of this gets deposited directly into the university's general fund, it's clear that Kawaoka is a cash-Tajima-ushi.

At some point in the past, the University of Wisconsin lost its way. Public relations became more important than truth and honesty, money more important than the state's citizens' health and safety. It's a real shame.