NABR Spokesperson Misleads Congressional Committee

TESTIMONY OF STEVEN L. LEARY, D.V.M.
PRESENTING ON BEHALF OF
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH
BEFORE THE
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON AGRICUTLURE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON LIVESTOCK, DAIRY AND POULTRY
May 8, 2007

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee,

Thank you for allowing me to testify today and for conducting this hearing on animal welfare. I am Dr. Steven L. Leary, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Veterinary Affairs at Washington University. I am testifying today on behalf of the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR). NABR is the only national, nonprofit organization dedicated solely to advocating sound public policy that recognizes the vital role of humane animal use in biomedical research, higher education and product safety testing.

Founded in 1979, NABR provides the unified voice for the scientific community on legislative and regulatory matters affecting laboratory animal research. NABR’s membership is comprised of more than 300 public and private universities, medical and veterinary schools, teaching hospitals, voluntary health agencies, professional societies, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and other animal research-related firms.

NABR, like essentially every special interest group focussed on maintaining the flow of public funds into private coffers, makes false claims intended to sway uninformed lawmakers. They commonly present false or erroneous claims under the guise of historical fact or current regulatory reality.

Even Dr. Leary's claim regarding the uniquness of NABR spins the facts. (See for instance Americans for Medical Progress.)

Let's look at his proclaimed facts in no particular order:

The IACUC, which is taken very seriously by each research institution, is an internal committee that is charged with reviewing, approving, and monitoring research protocols. An IACUC is comprised of a minimum of five members ...

In fact, the Animal Welfare Act is quite clear:

Definition - Committee: means the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) established under section 13(b) of the Act. It shall consist of at least three members...

Given that the IACUC is the keystone of the Act, the fact that Dr. Leary is wrong about this very basic fact should make us wonder whether he has gotten other basic things wrong.

Dr. Leary:

IACUCs require a major commitment from those who serve, but they have proved to be very effective in acting as a safeguard to insure that the research proposed is meritorious...

In fact, the only serious evaluation of the IACUC system has found exactly the opposite. The current definitive evaluation of the IACUC system is Plous S, Herzog H. Animal research. Reliability of protocol reviews for animal research. Science. 2001 Jul 27;293(5530):608-9, excerpted here:

Over the past 20 years, the reliability of scientific peer-review judgments has been a topic of frequent debate and scrutiny. However, one area of peer review that has not received much empirical investigation is the system that protects animal subjects from research risks. At most research institutions, studies involving animal subjects must be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)....

...[W]e conducted a study of randomly selected IACUCs from U.S. universities and colleges. Seventy committees were drawn from a master list of 916 IACUCs maintained by the U.S. Office for Protection from Research Risks. Of these 70, 50 agreed to participate in the study. Thirty-four IACUCs came from research or doctoral universities, seven came from master's colleges or universities, six came from specialized institutions (e.g., medical colleges), and three came from liberal arts colleges. In all, 494 of 566 voting members (151 females and 343 males), or 87% of those approached, took part in the study.

Each IACUC was asked to submit its three most recently reviewed protocols involving animal behavior, including the committee's decision on whether to approve the research in question. All information identifying the investigator or institution was then removed from the protocols, and each protocol was randomly assigned to be reviewed a second time by another participating IACUC. Voting members of the second committee were sent packets containing three masked protocols with a request to review the protocols and to send us a completed evaluation anonymously in a prepaid envelope.

Once we received reviews from individual committee members, the IACUCs were asked to meet as a group and render a final evaluation for each of the three protocols. Committees were asked to follow their standard operating procedures and to discuss the protocols as they would any other research proposal.

Protocol evaluations from the originating committee and from the second committee were not significantly related to one another…. This absence of a relation was found not only across the full set of 150 protocols, but for relatively invasive research involving procedures such as electric shock, food or water deprivation, surgery, and drug or alcohol research...; for protocols involving euthanasia...; and for protocols in which the reviewing IACUC expected animals to experience a significant amount of pain.... Thus, regardless of whether the research involved terminal or painful procedures, IACUC protocol reviews did not exceed chance levels of intercommittee agreement....

Of the 118 instances in which the two committees differed in their protocol reviews (79% of all reviews), the second committee was more negative than the first 101 times. Indeed, the second committee rarely rated all dimensions of a protocol favorably.... For example, only 43% of protocols were seen as having a fairly or completely convincing justification for the type and number of animals used (a requirement of the Animal Welfare Act), and only 45% were rated as having good or excellent research designs and procedures. All told, 61% of protocols were judged as either "not very understandable" or "not understandable at all," as having "poor" research designs and procedures, or as justifying the type and number of animals in a way that was deemed "not very convincing" or "not convincing at all." ...

Dr. Leary:

Every research facility in the country receives at least one unannounced USDA inspection annually.

That's true, but his implied message, that these inspections are meaningful, is contrary to the USDA's own Inspector General's findings:

Audit Report
APHIS Animal Care Program
Inspection and Enforcement Activities
Report No. 33002-3-SF
September 2005
In monitoring research facilities, some VMOs did not verify the number of animals used in medical research, adequately sample the facilities’ protocols, or review other available records. This occurred because the inspection manual is too general, and the VMOs relied on the facilities to provide accurate and pertinent records. As a result, APHIS is misinformed on the number of regulated animals used in research, and has less assurance that protocols are properly completed, approved, and adhered to for the purpose of ensuring the health and safety of the animals.(pg 13)

Whether intentionally or out of ignorance, NABR's offical spokesperson, Dr. Steven L. Leary, misled the House Committee on easily verifiable facts such as the regulatory requirements for the makeup of Instituational Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) and the effectiveness of both the IACUC system and the USDA animal research laboratory inspection system.

Maybe it's unfair of me to expect an Assistant Vice Chancellor for Veterinary Affairs at a major research university who is acting as an NABR spokesperson to be reasonably informed. But given the clear fact that he isn't, it is not surprising that his speculations are also based on something other than evidence.

Dr. Leary:

Animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century...

(Sing Hallelujah!)

What evidence would be sufficient to debunk such a claim? When Leary says, "virtually" does he mean some, most, a few? How many examples contradicting his claim would be sufficient? I won't launch into a rebuttal of each of his silly claims here; I urge readers to visit the Americans For Medical Advancement website and peruse some of the very many articles there written by scientists and medical doctors who question the absurdity of claims like Leary's.

Cogitating monkeys can calculate statistics

Arguments defending animal research inevitably appeal to the image of a sick child who can't be saved unless countless animals are sacrificed to $cience. Only a cad wouldn't want to save a poor dying child. Deborah Blum used just this appeal to baseless angst when she repeatedly asked me during a debate she moderated whether pediatric drugs should be tested on babies rather than animals. (I said they are tested on babies because the animal tests are meaningless and misleading.)

In any case, much painful research with animals makes no claim about saving sick dying babies or anyone else; much of it is bluesky nonsense driven solely by curiosity.

Consider the research adressed in the article Cogitating monkeys can calculate statistics.

Tianming Yang and Michael Shadlen at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Washington in Seattle, US, tested the reasoning of two rhesus macaques ...

After several weeks of training on thousands of trials per day - clearly, the monkeys are no Einsteins - both macaques learned to match their choices closely to the actual probabilities revealed by the shapes they saw, choosing the correct target more than 75% of the time.

This is the first time monkeys have been shown to make such subtle probabilistic inferences.

"When we started this, we thought it was a high-risk project," says Shadlen. "When we had monkeys doing it, I was pretty shocked."...

The researchers also used electrodes in the brain to record the activity of 64 neurons in the lateral intraparietal area - a region on the side of the brain that is involved in attention and visual processing....

"We're exposing the basic elements, the fundamental biology of higher cognition," says Shadlen. Further work should allow the researchers to begin to understand the decision-making process in more detail.

Michael N. Shadlen (here, here, and here) has a long history of sticking electrodes in monkeys' brains. Tianming Yang is one of Shadlen's assistants (the cycle of abuse continues.)

The simple statement, "The researchers also used electrodes in the brain to record the activity of 64 neurons in the lateral intraparietal area..." is an antiseptic way of saying that Shadlen cut away part of the scalp, exposed the skull, drilled a hole, screwed and glued a box to the skull, and then pushed wires down into the monkeys' brains.

It also fails to mention the fact that monkeys having had this done to them must have continual medical care to cut away the developing scar tissue and be treated for recurring infections. Brain abcesses are not uncommon.

And, the monkeys, once surgically mutilated, are then restrained for hours on end and must work (follow lights on a screen) for (very commonly) an occasional drop of liquid. The monkeys are kept chronically thirsty and sometimes hungry.

And this undeniable suffering has absolutely nothing to do with curing sick children. It's just mental masturbation, knowledge for knowledge sake.

I wonder if Shadlen can cogitate the liklihood of him and his evil cronies being view as monsters by future generations. I wonder if he can mentally calculate the odds of being grouped with Dario Ringach?

The Triple Whammy

One, two, three, you're outta here!

Only industry spin-doctors and their dupes make the consistent claim that animals in biomedical research are well cared for, that the research is carefully monitored, and that the suffering in the labs is not intense. Strike one.

Only the ignorant and the vested interests make the consistent claim that animal models of human disease and drug response are valid and generate meaningful helpful data regarding human health and care. Strike two.

The third strike is dishonesty. Over at Adventures in Science and Ethics on ScienceBlogs, Janet D. Stemwedel, who teaches ethics to aspiring scientists apparently, has made the observation that:

All scientists appreciate the need for honesty in reporting scientific findings and the wrongness of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.

Despite (1), a certain (alarming?) number of scientists nevertheless engage in fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism with some regularity.

A certain (even larger?) number of scientists are aware of the scientists who engage in fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.

The known bad actors seem to get rewarded, rather than smacked down, for committing fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.

ScienceBlogs is presumably heavily visited by scientists. Telling, is the fact that no one has challenged her claims. Apparently, visitors to her site agree that a "certain (alarming?) number of scientists nevertheless engage in fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism with some regularity." Strike three.

So, animal research causes much suffering, is meaningless, and a "certain (alarming?) number of scientists" are liars, which makes the misery they inflict all the more egregious.

It's no wonder that the few ethicists who address animal research can't come to grips with the fact that the oversight system is broken, the paradigm is suspect, or that animals have minds and feelings not qualitatively different from our own. If they can't even figure out how to address the mundane matters of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, how in the world could they hope to grapple with these profound and society-shaking issues?

My suggestion was to make the labs' activities transparent to the public. A little sunshine would go a long way toward cleaning up this godawful mess.

Did New TB Case Come From CDC?

CDC:

How many cases of XDR TB have been reported in the United States?

In the United States, 49 cases of XDR TB have been reported between 1993 and 2006.

The newest case is Andrew Speaker, whose story has generated intense news coverage. The main theme has been that he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, advised not to travel, did so any way, and exposed many airline passengers to the potentially deadly disease.

XDR TB stands for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. This drug-resistance makes it a potentially serious pandemic and lethal agent, especially if it were to mutate (or be bioengineered) into a highly virulent strain.

One part of the story that has not been adequately pursued is the oddly coincidental fact that Speaker's fiance's father is Dr. Robert C. Cooksey, an XDR TB researcher at CDC:

First and foremost, I am concerned about the health and well being of my son-in-law and family, as well as the passengers on the affected flights.

I am the father-in-law of Andrew Speaker, who was recently publicly identified as a person infected with extensively drug resistant tuberculosis. I do work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I have worked at the CDC for 32 years. I´m a research microbiologist in CDC´s Division of Tuberculosis (TB) Elimination, and my work does involve working with a wide range of organisms, including TB. As a research microbiologist, my laboratory work involves identifying the characteristics and features of bacteria.

As part of my job, I am regularly tested for TB. I do not have TB, nor have I ever had TB. My son-in-law´s TB did not originate from myself or the CDC´s labs, which operate under the highest levels of biosecurity.

I wasn´t involved in any decisions my son-in-law made regarding his travel, nor did I ever act as a CDC official or in an official CDC capacity with respect to any of the events of the past weeks.

As a parent, frequent traveler, and biologist, I well appreciate the potential harm that can be caused by diseases like TB. I would never knowingly put my daughter, friends or anyone else at risk from such a disease....

There are many problems associated with Dr. Cooksey's statement.

The first, and one that alerts us to question the rest of his claims, is the idea that Speaker would not have immediately conferred with his soon-to-be father-in-law TB expert upon learning that he had a baseball-sized TB lesion in one of his lungs.

Something smells.

Cooksey says, "I wasn´t involved in any decisions my son-in-law made regarding his travel." He let his daughter go off with a TB patient, jet around the world, and yet says, "First and foremost, I am concerned about the health and well being of my son-in-law and family, as well as the passengers on the affected flights."

Something smells very rotten here.

Second, the coincidence of Speaker's rare disease and his father-in-law's research strains credulity. Forty-nine cases in the US in 13 years, and one just happens to be the fiance of the daughter of scientist studying this rare disease.

Third, the fact that Cooksey has never tested positive for TB is not necessarily proof that he wasn't the carrier. TB is member of the genus Mycobacteria, known for its unusually tough cell wall. Mycobacteria can take years to culture, and Mycobacteria tuberculosis, the causative agent of TB, can take four weeks to culture, and remains viable for hours in its airborne state.

Even if TB spores were inhaled by Dr. Cooksey, he might not have become infected. Exposure is not a guarantee of infection. Given the toughness of the organism it isn't impossible that he might have carried the spores in his lungs and out of the lab.

Fourth, Cooksey's claim that CDC's labs operate "under the highest levels of biosecurity" is not reassuring. CDC has made erroneous claims in the past such as the claim that the animals in its labs are well cared for. Other labs operating "under the highest levels of biosecurity," like Plum Island, have been somewhat less than secure and may have been the source of significant public health risks.

Something doesn't add up.

Mouse Models

No one knows with much certainty just how many mice are consumed annually in American labs. Estimates of 20 to 30 million are common. But creating today's exotic strains -- with more or less precisely defined genetics -- can entail killing twenty or more mice for each one that meets a scientist's demands. These by-products of the industry do not rate even a tally mark.

The use of mice and every other "model" species is based on the notion that mice and humans are essentially the same when it comes to basic biology. The claim is that if we can learn how a drug is metabolized in the liver of a mouse, for instance, we can assume that it will be somewhat similarly metabolized in a human.

Strong theoretical arguments explain why these assumptions turn out to be false more often than not (nearly always in fact), but the animal research community chooses to ignore the history of failure and continues to hurt and consume these little beasts in ever-growing numbers.

In the case of mouse livers and human livers, a recent study by researchers at MIT explains why mice fail so uniformily as good predictive models. An MIT press release explains:

The researchers and their colleagues had previously worked out many aspects of gene regulation in the human liver, which is one reason the researchers chose to study the [mouse] liver. In the current study they compared 4,000 human genes with nearly identical counterparts, known as homologous genes, from mouse liver cells.

Given the similarity between the two species' DNA sequences, the researchers expected that transcription factors would bind to the same sites in most pairs of homologous genes. To their surprise, they found that most of the binding sites--between 41 percent and 89 percent, depending on the transcription factor--were in different locations in humans and mice.

"The number of genes with the identical regulation in both species was very, very small," [Ernest] Fraenkel said.

Before they began, the researchers expected to see some differences in gene regulation between mice and humans, because the human liver has evolved to process cooked food, said Fraenkel. However, the magnitude of change was much higher than they anticipated.

Not surprisingly, they now say that it is the absence of similarity that makes mice valuable tools.

Experimenters criticized for mouse 'torture'?

MSNBC:

Experimenters criticized for mouse 'torture'
Officials say research studying hopelessness and depression ethical
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18789038/
Updated: 4:55 p.m. CT May 21, 2007

ALBUQUERQUE - Mice were hung by their tails with adhesive tape, subjected to electrical shocks and forced to swim until nearly drowning during experiments done at the University of New Mexico.
University officials say there was nothing wrong with the research that helped a high school student study hopelessness and depression for a science fair project. But Daniel Theele the former lab veterinarian at the university who had been in charge of the welfare of lab animals at UNM called the research "torture." He said "I have defended animal research, stating that we do not abuse animals. Then, this slapped me in the face." He says he was forced to resign after complaining about the experiments.
...

This is such an odd story. I wonder why the vet was really fired?

There is a lot of hopelessness, depression, and suffering in the UNM labs that is as unlikely to lead to benefit as was the student’s science fair project. After all, someone might have seen her experiments and been inspired to go on and find a cure for cancer in mice. Oh wait, we cured cancer in mice 20 years ago.

The University of New Mexico is involved in the most speculative research and development ever undertaken. Ever, anywhere. Though admittedly, UNM isn’t the only actor in this modern tragedy.

There is research underway at the university to develop vaccines for various select agents -- possible biowarfare agents. This is part of the 9-11 hysteria.

Mouse models of cancer, monkey models of HIV, you name it, animal models of human disease and drug response are very poor predictors of anything having to do with human illness. Animal models have a nearly perfect failure rate precisely because they are actually tested in humans. In the case of the select agent vaccine program, this crucial test is unlikely to ever take place.

The research is pie-in-the-blue sky, and the cost in terms of tax dollars and suffering is grotesquely greater than any likely benefits.

Grant Number: 5P01AI056295-029003
Project Title: Primate Core
PI Information: Name Email Title
VAN ANDEL, ROGER A. roger.vanandel@nau.edu

“The incidence of primary pulmonary infections for most of the major biothreats is extremely low. Therefore, we will not be able to rely on testing new therapeutics and vaccines during "natural" outbreaks as is commonly done for many more common infections. Further, as is the case with the human immunodeficiency virus, direct challenges with the biothreats in normal human populations is unlikely to be a viable alternative. Because of these issues we will need to rely on animal models much more than usual for understanding the basic pathophysiology of the disease as well as determining the efficacy of new therapeutics and vaccines….

Then-La Cueva High School student Sarah Founds said that project at UNM was worthwhile and did no harm. "I thought it was awesome. I had a lot of fun working on it." She said it "wasn't overly painful." And that she’d, " encourage other students to do that kind of research."

And really, considering other research underway at UNM, hers doesn’t seem out of the ordinary in anyway.

Intentional Behavior and Cruelty: Video Snips

Interesting clips of animals acting with intention and planning and disturbing clips of primates (mostly) being hurt in various bogus research projects.

This is a nice short overview asking why we don't seem to recognize that intelligent life is all around us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxOCN4K9jg

Here is a crow using and modifying a tool in a laboratory setting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ykewnc0oE

Naysayers (think bigots) might claim that learned behavior in a laboratory isn't really an indication of intentional behavior and mind. Maybe the crow in the clip above was taught to behave in this way over time, and maybe he or she isn't really goal directed. Here's an example of more diligent tool fashioning by a wild crow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esfo6Wh-Ty8

Interspecies interpersonal relationships are significant challenges to claims that animals are not independent agents. In this clip, a crow befriends a young cat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6mfHFLLc4U

Here's a clip from the Ellen DeGeneres Show of a dog who is clearly acting with intent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkbdSOZuass

This is a collection of three snips. All three show goal-directed planning. The animal escaping from the pit is an African animal called a ratel or honey badger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NdVGVbw9-M

This is a video of a bonobo named Kanzi playing Pacman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ttRaXlnfs

This a snip of the widely publicized early 1950s experiment designed by the infamous Harry Harlow that demonstrated what everyone already knew. It amounted to little more child abuse. Of note is the term used to describe the housing conditons: "semi-isolation." In the labs today, the sides of the cages are solid and the isolation more profound, yet, the labs consistently and uniformily claim that the monkeys are not isolated because they have visual and auditory contact with other monkeys.


This is the story of Britches, an infant stumptailed macaque rescued by "terrorists" (ALF) from a lab at the University of California-Riverside in 1985. If rescuing this baby is terrorism, then I'm pro-terrorism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd95gVyFo5U

This is child abuse as rocket science. The chimpanzee is named Ham.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RJxAqisaWg

This is undercover footage taken inside the Covance lab in Vienna, Virginia. Every lab claims that the animals they hurt and kill are treated with respect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fmLezLbXI

This is a tightly edited piece that says that hurting an owl monkey is justified if crippled humans might be helped. What isn't shown are the surgeries or the life the monkey is being forced to endure. Why are drawings used rather than shots of the monkey? This monkey is a victim of our self-importance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-cpcoIJbOU

This is part of the hours upon hours of video taken inside the NIH Oregon National Primate Research Center by Matt Rossell while he was working as an environmental enrichment technician.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgh_QUdbkaY

This is the result of experimental brain operations. No one other than the vivisector who did this benefited whatsoever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVG7n_jRhdI

This is undercover video from inside Huntingdon Life Sciences. The knowledge that this is going on day in and day out and that government supports and defends such cruelty is the main reason that some people are compelled to take direct action to stop it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNUjkM_DC_A

A series of stills from within the monkey labs to the accompanyment of Maria Daines' "Monkey in a Cage."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RERCFCCgqo

Know of other snips demonstrating animal mind and/or crulty in the monky labs? Send me a link.

The Cycle of Abuse

"Ours is the first study to show that rhesus monkey females who are abused by their mothers in infancy tend to become abusive mothers themselves, and the first to provide experimental evidence that the intergenerational transmission of abuse is the result of early experience and not genetic inheritance," Dario Maestripieri, as quoted in Medical News Today referring to his 2005 publication of “Early experience affects the intergenerational transmission of infant abuse in rhesus monkeys.”

The tendency for the cycle of abusive and neglectful parenting to be transmitted across generations has been well documented. The authors report on 40 families who broke this family pattern. The mechanisms for change used in these families included reliance on a broad network of resources, a degree of self-differentiation, an attitude of realistic optimism, and the ability to marshal extra resources to meet crisis situations. The authors recommend further study of such exceptions and a more hopeful approach to the problem of abusive families.

R.S. Hunter and N. Kilstrom in the abstract of their 1979 American Journal of Psychiatry paper “Breaking the cycle in abusive families.”

Dario Maestripieri’s research on infant abuse is meaningless in any sense related to actual societal problems or how to address them. His “discovery” is just another among many that have consistently post-dated the publication of research from human studies and plain observation, as the 1979 paper above makes clear.

His waste of public funds is one thing, but his research is cruel as well. At the most basic level, monkeys likely to abuse their infants shouldn’t be allowed to become pregnant. The fact that they do is a willful decision made by Maestripieri with full knowledge that infants are going to be born into an abusive situation.

Other methods he uses are also cruel. Four times a year, the monkeys are captured and undergo spinal taps. According to eMedicineHealth:

About 5-30% of people who have a spinal tap get what is commonly referred to as post–lumbar puncture headache.

[The] headache may start up to 48 hours after the procedure and usually lasts for 2 days or less.

The headache typically worsens when you are in an upright position and lessens when you lie flat.

The cause of the headache is leakage of the spinal fluid from around the puncture site.

Younger people and males have an increased risk of headaches after lumbar puncture compared with older people and females.

One retired anesthesiologist says, “I have seen patients (not mine, of course) suffering from spinal headache after surgery or spinal tap. Their pain is excruciating. Even the strongest pain killers like morphine cannot alleviate their pain.”

The monkeys' fear associated with Maestripieri’s quarterly roundup is probably intense. Mothers fear for their infants and for themselves. For monkeys who suffer from intense and long headaches or other undiagnosed maladies resulting from the stress of capture and the spinal tap there may be strong negative associations with the event that tend to make it additionally frightening.

I was led to consider Dario Maestripieri’s research as a result of working on a bibliography of primate cognition. I was intrigued by many of the recent papers on macaque and chimpanzee cognition by Michael J. Beran.

Though I am familiar with the Language Research Center of Georgia State University in Atlanta, I didn’t know much about Spelman College where Beran is a part-time professor in the Department of Psychology.

A visit to the Spelman website led me to reading about Kai McCormack, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, whose institutional webpage says:

“Research interest: Non-human primate development, particularly the effects of early life stress on behavioral and physiological outcomes.”

I searched around for more information about McCormack and found her “research” described in more detail in the Center for Biomedical and Behavioral Research at Spelman College’s Winter 2006 newsletter:

Dr. Kai McCormack, Assistant Professor of Psychology, comes to Spelman College from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research interest focuses on the effects of early adverse experiences on the developing rhesus macaque, the social development of maternally abused and non-abused infants, and the impact of early abuse on the developing hypothalamic pituitary adrenalin (HPA) axis. Her research findings have implications for predicting and treating the outcomes of early negative experiences in humans, and gaining insight into the possible precursors of psychopathology.

So, I stuck her name in PubMed and learned that her research amounts to three papers, all published in 2006. It’s odd that she was at Emory, home to the NIH Yerkes National Primate Research Center and managed to get her name on only three papers associated with torturing monkeys:

Maternal care patterns and behavioral development of rhesus macaque abused infants in the first 6 months of life. McCormack K, Sanchez MM, Bardi M, Maestripieri D.Dev Psychobiol. 2006 Nov;48(7):537-50.

Early maternal rejection affects the development of monoaminergic systems and adult abusive parenting in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Maestripieri D, Higley JD, Lindell SG, Newman TK, McCormack KM, Sanchez MM. Behav Neurosci. 2006 Oct;12(5):1017-24.

Influence of parenting style on the offspring's behaviour and CSF monoamine metabolite levels in crossfostered and noncrossfostered female rhesus macaques. Maestripieri D, McCormack K, Lindell SG, Higley JD, Sanchez MM. Behav Brain Res. 2006 Nov 25;175(1):90-5. Epub 2006 Sep 12.

Here's a stupid bit of pr fluff about her work.

Upon seeing that she was associated with Maestripieri and his hideous career, I decided to write a bit about his redundant and worthless research, which I hope explains why I wrote this.

Seeing that Spelman is home to both McCormack and Michael J. Beran, I was once again struck by the absolute failure of our college and university system to provide moral and ethical guidance and to constrain cruelty. Apparently, discoveries like Beran's, about similarities between monkeys’ minds and emotions and our own, no matter how close, are seen by some as reason to hurt them.

The sad irony here is that McCormack and Maestripieri probably learned to be mean to animals and are perpetuating this cycle of violence by teaching college students that they too can and should follow their example.

What’s right in front of us is often the hardest thing to see.

Maestripieri’s most recent worthless paper (as of May 23, 2007) is this:

Intergenerational transmission of maternal behavior in rhesus macaques and its underlying mechanisms.Maestripieri D, Lindell SG, Higley JD. Dev Psychobiol. 2007 Mar;49(2):165-71.

Thirteen group-living rhesus macaque females that were crossfostered shortly after birth were followed longitudinally until they gave birth for the first time. Their maternal behavior was compared to the behavior of both their foster and their biological mothers, and analyzed in relation to the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine metabolites (5-HIAA, HVA, and MHPG) measured in their second year of life. Crossfostered females were similar to their foster mothers in their rates of maternal rejection and grooming, whereas their contact-making behavior was more similar to that of their biological mothers. Crossfostered females with lower CSF concentrations of 5-HIAA exhibited higher rates of maternal rejection than females with higher CSF 5-HIAA. In a related article (Maestripieri et al., 2006), we reported that rhesus infants reared by highly rejecting mothers had lower CSF 5-HIAA in their first 3 years of life. Taken together, these findings suggest that early social experience and experience-related long-term changes in serotonergic function may play a role in the intergenerational transmission of maternal rejection from mothers to daughters.

On and on, the cycle of violence continues unchecked in animal labs around the world.

The Buddha of Compassion

[Excuse me as I vomit into my pool of tears.]

Milwaukee Journal Sentinal

Dalai Lama digs into veal, pheasant
Posted: May 15, 2007
First Course

Nancy Stohs


It's a question most chefs never get the privilege of pondering:

What to serve the Dalai Lama?

In Milwaukee chef Sandy D'Amato's case, the answer was veal.

Veal?

Despite expectations that a vegetarian feast would be in order, the team of chefs assembled to cook for His Holiness on his recent visit to Madison was given no such instruction, said Catherine McKiernan, executive chef at the Madison Club, where the elaborate luncheon was held.

The Dalai Lama is, it turns out, a meat lover.

And so the five-course menu, served to about 60 people on May 3, including the guest of honor, his entourage and assorted citizens, included a stuffed pheasant breast, D'Amato's slow-cooked veal roast with scalded morels and escarole, and an asparagus soup with a chicken stock base.

A cured fish appetizer, mixed green salad, eggplant-and-chickpea entrée, and three full-size chocolate desserts completed the menu....

See too: His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a Callous Prick

Experts fear escape of 1918 flu from lab

I should have read this more carefully when I cited it in the original post.

Experts fear escape of 1918 flu from lab
10:33 21 October 2004
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition.
Debora MacKenzie

The 1918 flu virus spread across the world in three months and killed at least 40 million people. If it escaped from a lab today, the death toll could be far higher. “The potential implications of an infected lab worker – and spread beyond the lab – are terrifying,” says D. A. Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading biosecurity expert.

Yet despite the danger, researchers in the US are working with reconstructed versions of the virus at less than the maximum level of containment. ....

The latest work was done by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His team showed that adding the 1918 gene for the surface protein haemagglutinin to modern viruses made them far deadlier to mice. The researchers also found that people born after 1918 have little or no immunity.

The team started the work at the highest level of containment, BSL-4, at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. Then they decided the viruses were safe enough to handle at the next level down, and did the rest of the work across the border in a BSL-3Ag lab in Madison. The main difference between BSL-4 and BSL-3Ag is that precautions to ensure staff do not get infected are less stringent: while BSL-4 involves wearing fully enclosed body suits, those working at BSL-3Ag labs typically have half-suits.

Kawaoka told New Scientist that the decision to move down to BSL-3Ag was taken only after experiments at BSL-4 showed that giving mice the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in advance prevented them getting sick. This means, he says, that if all lab workers take oseltamivir “they cannot become infected”. ...

Yet this assumes that the mouse results apply to humans. And the findings have not been published. In similar experiments, Terrence Tumpey’s team at the US Department of Agriculture’s poultry research lab in Athens, Georgia, got quite different results: they found that mice given oseltamivir still got sick and 1 in 10 died. It is not clear why Kawaoka’s mice fared better.

What is more, all the safety precautions are aimed at preventing escape, not dealing with it should it occur. If any of Kawaoka’s lab workers are exposed to the virus despite all the precautions, and become infected despite taking oseltamivir, the consequences could be disastrous.

“I experienced disbelief…regarding the decision to relocate the reconstructed 1918 influenza strain from a BSL-4 facility to a BSL-3 facility, based on its susceptibility to antiviral medication,” Ronald Voorhees, chief medical officer at the New Mexico Department of Health, wrote on ProMED-mail, an infectious diseases mailing list....

Unbelieveable.