The Calculus of Deceit

Liars calculate the costs of telling the truth and the potential costs of lying, weigh the results, and then choose to tell a lie.

This seems pretty straightforward.

Liars convince themselves that their lies won't be found out. Or, maybe they reason that the costs of being caught lying, while embarrassing and perhaps costly, are less of a problem than the results of telling the truth. After all, if one lies, the truth might not come to light. Maybe the  benefits of the lie, if it remains unrealized, are great enough that the risks of being caught lying simply pale in comparison.

When I was a kid, I lied. The risk of telling my parents the truth was greater than the risk of telling them the truth. I reasoned that the punishment for admitting to having done something that I knew they wouldn't approve of was no worse than the punishment I would have to endure if they caught me in a lie. So, all things being equal, even as a ten-year-old, I understood the odds: certain punishment vs. possible punishment. A no-brainer.

But I grew up. Honesty actually matters. And it matters a whole lot when one is in a position of public trust.

When people involved in the public's business lie to the public, their lies are much more serious than the lies of someone else, or the lies of a ten year old boy.

In the case of the University of Wisconsin, Madison's claim that the United States Department of Agriculture didn't find anything wrong with the treatment of the cats in Tom Yin's laboratory, the institution lied to the public.

It's important to understand this point.

The state university lied to the citizens of the state. 

It's not that they misspoke. They weren't mistaken. No one misled them.

 They lied.

They lied to you.

They lied knowingly. They told calculated lies. Repeatedly.

They hoped and banked on the likelihood that you would never learn the truth. They miscalculated.

But they knew all along that there was at least some possibility that their lies would be discovered.

They must believe that the public, you, are simply too stupid to notice. They believe that you are too stupid, too dull to do anything about it.

It's true that PeTA's first complaint to the USDA about the conditions in the Yin lab was dismissed. But the USDA is filled with people who have varying degrees of respect for animals, so big deal.

Their follow up complaint included statements from a UW veterinarian who added to and validated their observations. The USDA was forced to pay more attention.

The USDA inspected the lab and found wide-spread suffering and evidence of sloppy surgical procedures that failed to meet modern aseptic standards. Many of the cats had serious life-threatening infections associated with the screws driven into their skulls and the surgically implanted eye coils.

And the university knew this. 

And they told the public repeatedly that the USDA had found nothing amiss.

They believe that you are too stupid to notice or to do anything about it.

They might be right.

The university has lied to the public so many times over the years that they have come to believe that they are never, ever, held accountable for their lies.

Eesh.

The willing gullibility of reporters and newscasters makes any genuine discussion of the details of the university's use of animals nearly impossible.

Liars. Matter-of-fact habitual liars lying about the things they do to animals in their hidden labs. Despicable.

Get active. Get involved. Speak out. Call your state legislators today.

The Vilas Monkeys (Part Four)

The Vilas Monkeys (Part Four): The Ten-Year Anniversary of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Most Blatant Instance of Animal Cruelty and Lying to the Public. A Story of Cover-up, Conspiracy, Adultery, Battery, Disdain for Public Sentiment, and Crimes Too Unbelievable and Hideous to Discuss in Polite Company

Part Four

The Refusal to Accept Responsibility

To review: On June 15, 1989, UW Primate Center Director Robert Goy and six senior staff members signed a written statement promising that monkeys at the zoo and from the zoo would not be used in “invasive experimental procedures.”

On April 18, 1990, the new Primate Center Director, John Hearn, reconfirmed the agreement in writing, “I confirm that the existing and future policies of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center are that any animals bred at the zoo are used in non-interventive behavioral research or for breeding purposes only.”

And on February 1, 1995, Jonn Hearn again confirmed, in writing, the UW policy:

We also reviewed our agreement (since 1989) on the study of animals at Vilas and when they return to the Center. These animals are studied in non-invasive research or assigned to our breeding colony. Investigative procedures include those, with no damage or consequence to the animal required for veterinary health or routine procedures used in human medicine. These procedures cause no physical or sensory deficit and are all fully in compliance and previously approved through the required regulatory steps of the university and Federal employees. In cases where animals are no longer suitable for breeding, they are either assigned to our aged rhesus colony, again for non-invasive work, or euthanized humanely. In cases where animals do not meet criteria for genetic health or inbreeding, similar procedures apply. In cases where exceptional circumstances require a different use, for example unique genetic characteristics requiring more detailed investigation for human and animal health, we will review the proposal in advance with you.

During the summer of 1997, the public learned that the university had been violating the eight-year-old agreement for almost eight years and had used at least 201 monkeys inappropriately and banked over $200,000 in the process. The university admitted that the violations were a “serious breach.”

In spite of all of this, the university refused to take responsibility or to affix blame. They lied to the residents of Madison for eight years, allowed at least 201 monkeys to be hurt and killed after promising not to do so in writing, on three separate occasions, and then violated the agreements again openly and very publicly by having most of the remaining monkeys shipped to Tulane university for use in its invasive and terminal primate experimentation.

And no one was ever held accountable. No one took responsibility. Upon being caught in such a big lie, they continued lying, protected each other, and sent the remaining monkeys off to be killed, all the while lying anew about how the monkeys would be used there and saying in public meetings that Tulane was very excited about having such large intact social groups to study.

They lied repeatedly, in writing, and in public presentations to a multitude of reporters, citizens, Dane County committees, and the entire Dane County Board of Supervisors. The university’s response to being caught in such a long series of lies was to keep lying, to make up more lies, and to refuse to do anything remotely resembling making amends.

Officials associated with the Henry Vilas Zoo say they are concerned about the UW's reluctance to determine who authorized invasive research on dozens of monkeys raised at the zoo.

"One of the things expected of a person as an elected official is makingsure answers are provided," said Madison Ald. Napoleon Smith, who serves on the Dane County Zoo Commission. "Only the university can provide those answers, so we're all awaiting them." Earlier this month, The Capital Times reported that invasive experiments were conducted on dozens of monkeys raised at the zoo, despite written promises by UW Primate Research Center officials that the monkeys would not be harmed.

Primate center officials initially denied that large numbers of monkeys were being transferred from the zoo and used for invasive research. (Message To Uw: Come Clean Monkey Violations Upset County, City, Zoo Officials. Capital Times. Wednesday, August 27, 1997.)

And, the lies have not slowed down one iota as we can readily see by comparing the cases of Jennifer Hess and Ei Terasawa (here, here, and here) with university’s oft-intoned mantra that they treat the animals well and with respect and concern.

A sad message in all of this is that no matter how much the University of Wisconsin, Madison lies to the public about its use of animals, the public forgets almost immediately, or doesn’t pay attention in the first place.

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me continuously; I must be an idiot, which of course, is exactly how the university views the average Madisonian.

Vivisection Connections

The view that torture and non-consenting potentially harmful human experimentation are violations of a person’s inalienable rights is based on the position that an individual’s interest in not being harmed always outweighs any potential benefit to others, no matter how many others might benefit, no matter the degree of benefit, or who the beneficiaries or who the research subjects might be.

This view isn’t universally shared.

The United States, long cherished by human rights proponents around the world as a country that abhorred torture, has officially reversed itself and now endorses cruel methods of interrogation and incarceration without trial or judicial oversight.

Many medical doctors, scientists, hospitals, and universities in the U.S. have engaged in deleterious experiments on humans without their knowledge or informed consent. The known examples include the Tuskegee syphilis studies (1932-1972), the Willowbrook hepatitis experiment on retarded children (1963-1966), the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital case (1963), the University of Cincinnati whole body radiation experiments (1960-1972), and many others from as recently as 1999, when all medical research with human subjects was suspended at the West Los Angeles and Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Facilities due to long standing oversight failures and failures to obtain informed consent.

You might think that, of all places, Israel would be the safest place for vulnerable patients, and that Jewish doctors and hospitals there would have a heightened sensitivity to using uninformed humans as experimental subjects, but in at least some instances this hasn’t been the case. In 2006, four doctors were arrested and two hospitals cited for their failure to safeguard patients when it was discovered that the doctors had performed “thousands” of experiments on unsuspecting elderly Jewish patients, some of who died as a result.

It is likely that in many if not most or even all of these examples, the doctors and the hospitals involved justified their experiments with the idea that more people might be helped than were certainly being harmed, or that science would benefit (whatever the heck that means.) And this, of course, is the self-same justification used for all medical research using animals. That is, those who experiment on animals and those who experiment on humans without their fully-informed consent are of a like mind.

The similarities between non-consenting human experimentation and animal experimentation are substantial. There must be something about having power over others that is attractive to a certain segment of the population. Dress it up as medical research or even law enforcement, but physical control of others is seductive to a certain personality type.

Martha Stephens writes:

It can hardly be insisted too strongly that the doctors who carried out the radiation tests, or administered the College where the tests took place, were by no means alienated or marginalized physicians. They were graduates of Harvard or other prestigious schools…. The team investigators published in received journals and often served their profession in national posts. Their views, feelings, predilections, and habits of mind with regard to their patients and their research subjects must be assumed to be the views and habits of many in their profession, in that time and this. The Treatment: The story of those who died in the Cincinnati radiation experiments. Duke University Press. 2002. (pp 101-102)

What astounds me is that in the face of the federal government lying about torturing people, black-ops secret prisons, rendition, secret human experimentation, cover-ups about laboratory accidents, spying on its citizens, and on and on, that, when the same people claim that animals in labs are being well-cared for and treated with respect, or that a cure (for the disease du jour) is just around the corner, and so many people believe them.

How many lies do people have to realize that they’ve been told before they wake up to the fact they are being lied to?

And this brings us to an obvious but mostly overlooked weakness in the vivisector’s position: that is, his inevitable forfeiture of all claim to have his word believed. It is hardly to be expected that a man who does not hesitate to vivisect for the sake of science will hesitate to lie about it afterwards to protect it from what he deems the ignorant sentimentality of the laity….

Here, then, is a pretty deadlock. Public support of vivisection is founded almost wholly on the assurances of the vivisectors that great public benefits may be expected from the practice. Not for a moment do I suggest that such a defense would be valid even if proved. But when the witnesses begin by alleging that in the cause of science all the customary ethical obligations (which include the obligation to tell the truth) are suspended, what weight can any reasonable person give to their testimony? I would rather swear fifty lies than take an animal which had licked my hand in good fellowship and torture it. If I did torture the dog, I should certainly not have the face to turn round and ask how any person there suspect an honorable man like myself of telling lies. Most sensible and humane people would, I hope, reply flatly that honorable men do not behave dishonorably, even to dogs. The murderer who, when asked by the chaplain whether he had any other crimes to confess, replied indignantly, “What do you take me for?” reminds us very strongly of the vivisectors who are so deeply hurt when their evidence is set aside as worthless.
The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors (1909)
George Bernard Shaw

"Forum" Keeps Details Hidden

In the summer of 2010, a Dane County Supervisor introduced a resolution that sought the creation of a Citizens Advisory Panel that would try to answer these questions:

1. Is the treatment of monkeys in laboratories in Dane County humane?

2. What is needed to enable the retirement of monkeys from UW–Madison’s laboratories after they are used in experiments?

3. Is experimenting on monkeys ethical?

The panel would then write a report documenting and explaining the Panel’s conclusions within six months of the Panel’s first meeting.

[See the initial draft here.]

Mention of Covance, the world’s largest importer and consumer of monkeys, with a lab in Madison using 7,000 monkeys a year, was almost immediately struck from the resolution.

Over the following weeks, two committees took up the resolution. It passed through the first and died in the second. At a subsequent meeting of the full Board, supervisors opposed to the resolution mentioned a statement made by the Vice Chancellor for Research at the second committee meeting. He said:

I’m Martin Cadwallader, and I’m the vice chancellor for research and the dean of the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The university is not in favor of Resolution 35 as currently written. However, the university proposes to increase opportunities for citizens of Dane County and beyond to learn about our animal research program, raise issues, and engage in dialog.

To this end, we propose a series of forums that would involve research scientists, ethicists, veterinarians, and others engaged in, or interested in, animal research both on and off campus. The purpose would be to provide periodic opportunities to exchange ideas, become aware of the changing federal landscape in research, and provide an open forum on a broad range of animal research topics.

The issues might include: Who funds research of this kind? Are experiments involving animals necessary? Are there alternatives to using animals for research? Who is looking out for the animals? What happens when animals are no longer needed for research projects? What’s the value of research with animals?

In addition, we are committed to offering tours of our primate center, and we encourage you to take a careful look at our website on animal research which provides a great deal of information about the research underway at UW-Madison. It also provides information about our animal care and use program.

Our aim is to make our animal research program more transparent to interested citizens, and to provide valuable information on the concerns and interests of our community.

Now, over a year later, after the promise of tours turned out to be meaningless rhetoric, and after the fourth of the forums promised by Cadwallader, it seems fair to consider whether or not they have made their animal research program more transparent to interested citizens.

The answer seems straightforwardly to be, no.

The most recent event was held on October 11, 2011. It was a lecture by Paul Kaufman, Professor & Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Kaufman uses monkeys in his glaucoma and presbyopia publicly-funded research. He may use and kill more monkeys than anyone else on campus. His methods are highly invasive.You can watch his presentation here.

After his lecture, a three-person panel of UW faculty members made fairly brief statements.

One of the panel members, Susan Lederer, Chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics, said that one of her areas of interest is the way animals are presented in science. (I know of only one paper by her on the topic, “Political animals: The shaping of biomedical research literature in twentieth-century America.” Isis, 1992. It’s well worth reading.) [She begins speaking at about 57:15.] She called the audience’s attention to the fact that Kaufman’s slides had included only one image of a monkey [it was the one used in the poster advertising the event] and included no details of what is actually done to the animals. She also pointed to Kaufman's use of the image of children in his presentation -- a persuasive device Kaufman left unremarked upon.

After the panelists' remarks, Rob Streiffer -- the moderator and a member of the Forum Committee -- asks Kaufman to respond to Lederer's observations that the monkeys he uses remained hidden. [Begins at about 1:06:13.]

Streiffer:

I'd like Dr. Kaufman, if he could, to elaborate on one of the questions that Sue Lederer had, about what exactly is the experience, to the best that we can understand it, of one of the animals in some of the work you were drawing from here. Some of the slides talked about seven hours of treatment, one talked about five days of treatment. How long do you use them? What happens during the time you use them? And where do they go when your done?

Kaufman responds to Lederer’s observation with the comment that he and Streiffer had decided that details and depictions of what he does to the monkeys weren’t appropriate for this lecture in front of a public audience. Lederer then apologized for her misunderstanding.

At this point, Adjunct Associate Professor Patricia McConnell, another member of the Forum Committee, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and said that Kaufman’s explanation was contrary to what the committee had expected from him. Rob Streiffer, with microphone in hand, remained mute on the point.

Kaufman's answer to Streiffer's specific questions comes at about 1:06:35, he wiggles this way and that, but finally says that there are strict rules and regulations on campus. That's the extent of his description of what is experienced by one of the monkeys he uses.

A few days later, I talked with another member of the Forum Committee, Dawn Kubly, who told me that it was fully expected that Kaufman would explain what he does to the monkeys. She also said that this had been very clear in the committee’s discussions and that Streiffer had said so explicitly.

Apparently, Strieffer had told the committee ahead of time that he spoke with Kaufman about the forum committee's desire to have him directly address the impact his research has on the animals he uses and the kinds of procedures they undergo. The hidden nature of the actual experiments is, of course, why the forums came about in the first place.

Kubly was angry, and afterward wrote to the committee about Kaufman’s failure to explain exactly what he does to monkeys in the course of his experiments. Only one committee replied in any substantive way, and they agreed with her.

Matter-of-factly, in the four “forums” that have so far taken place, no one attending can have learned very much at all about what is being dome to the monkeys being used at the University of Wisconsin. Throughout the forums, the only substantive description was of, arguably, the very least ethically problematic use of monkeys at the primate center. [See Charles Snowdon's presentation here.] The “forums” have widely missed the mark set by Cadwallader – “to make our animal research program more transparent to interested citizens, and to provide valuable information on the concerns and interests of our community.”

This comes as no surprise. The university routinely lies to the public about its use of animals(1); it routinely works to keep the public in the dark(2); it actively builds barriers to public understanding and access to information about its use of animals(3); it vigorously defends the most heinous and ethically questionable experimental using animals(4); it circumvents the law(5); it works to exempt itself from the law(6); and it works around-the-clock to attract more federal and private dollars for more experiments on more animals. It comes as no surprise to anyone moderately informed about the university’s dark history in this area that their claims about the “forums” are just more of the same.

One of the sillier bits of conversation that occurred at the Kaufman “forum” was the vivisectors’ claim that they would like to house animals under more humane conditions, but they just don’t have money to do so. They said that people who care about the monkeys ought to be asking the NIH or Congress to give them more money, so that they can enlarge their facilities and give the monkeys more space. The only reason the monkeys are kept in such tight [they didn’t say mind-numbing] quarters, they lamented, was the lack of funding.

Apparently, they blame someone other than themselves for the number of monkeys at the primate center. This is like the woman living in a school bus with umpteen dogs, cats, four goats, a donkey, and seven parrots arguing that it isn’t her fault that she can’t give the animals more room.

(1) Many examples could be given, but the most egregious might be the constellation of lies surrounding the monkeys housed at the Vilas Park Zoo. Multiple written promises made by the university not to harm the monkeys were routinely and secretly broken; a decade later, the primate center director was still lying about their lies to the public.

(2) The current series of “forums” is a good example. In the four opportunities to explain what is done to the animals, the university chose not to reveal any meaningful details. A stronger example is the extreme coordinated effort to derail Res 35.

(3) The most straightforward case among many examples is probably their shredding of nearly fifteen years of videoed experiments on monkeys to keep them out of the public eye.

(4) Only two countries still allow experiments on chimpanzees: the United States and Gabon. The university has convinced US representative Tammy Baldwin not to become a cosponsor of the Great Ape Protection Act because, she says, they worry that if experiments on chimpanzees are banned, where will it all end? They might see a reduction in their obscene access to federal tax dollars.

(5) Again, many examples could be cited. An ongoing example is their pattern of delaying their legally-required responses to open records requests, sometimes by many months. They claim that they don’t have the staff necessary to fulfill the requests within the time frame stipulated by the state attorney general’s office. But they could hire one or two people to do this if they cared about sharing information with the public and complying with the spirit of the law.

(6) In 2010 through 2011, after being caught in years-long series of experiments that were clear matter-of-fact violations of Wisconsin’s anti-cruelty laws – killing animals by means of decompression, and staging fights between animals – the university simply told its lackeys in the Wisconsin legislature to exempt anything it might care to do to animals from the state’s anti-cruelty laws, and they did.

*Forum: “a public meeting or lecture involving audience discussion.” It’s not clear to me that giving people an opportunity to ask a question or two really fits the notion of audience discussion. So far, the “forums” have been lectures that have entertained very limited questions from the audience; “discussion” implies the “consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate.”


See too:

Sunday, February 27, 2011: Dr. Lawrence Hansen's Visit Frightens UW Vivisectors into Hiding

Sunday, October 3, 2010: Res 35: Supervisors' Public Comments

Sunday, September 19, 2010: Christopher Coe on Res 35

Friday, September 17, 2010: Who killed Res 35?

Friday, September 17, 2010: Res 35 probably dead

Wednesday, September 15, 2010: Opposition to Res 35

Monday, August 23, 2010: Liar, liar ...

Thursday, July 22, 2010: Vested Interests, Double-Talk, Ethical Blindness

Monkeys in Dane County: Is the use of monkeys ethical?

Conflicts of Interest

The University of Wisconsin-Madison promised four years ago to provide public forums to help the public understand its use of animals in it various research programs. You can read about those promises here.

But even the organizers have admitted that the promised forums have not met the goals spelled out by Martin T. Cadwallader, Professor of Geography, Vice Chancellor for Research, and Dean of the Graduate School. Lots of titles, but Mr. Cadwallader should have asked a real teacher or two to help organize the forums because the university staff involved either don't know how to design a meaningful and effective educational activity or else don't really want to talk about the university animal labs, or both.

I've written enough about the "forums" elsewhere. I'm writing here because I have recently gained a little bit more insight into ways that the university tries to control their image. The forums are an example of the university saying one thing and then doing another. The thing they say gets some news exposure, and then the thing they actually do, doesn't. A recent example is the things they said to media about the cats in Tom Yin's lab and PeTA's complaint, and the things they actually did about the problems and about the USDA citations. Their claims were dutifully dispersed by media, but when caught in a series of lies, nothing got reported.

It all comes down to their active propaganda effort. It turns out that you can actually earn an undergraduate degree, a Masters, and a PhD in how to manipulate public perceptions at the university.

Degrees and certificates in "science writing" are offered by a handful of colleges and universities around the country. UW-Madison offers a handful of degree programs in UW-Madison's Department of Life Sciences Communications (LSC).

The LSC webpage explains: "As a department, we further fulfill The Wisconsin Idea through our relationships with UW-Extension, WSUM Madison Student Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television."

To begin to see why local media won't report on the problems, lies, cover-ups, and suffering associated with the use of animals at the university, consider the staff at LSC.

It is far too idealistic or naive to imagine that Wisconsin Public Radio or Wisconsin Public Television would ever cover the problems at the university. According to a conversation I had with the NPR Ombudsperson, self-censorship by NPR affiliates associated with universities is a recognized problem that no one has taken the time to address.

In the case of UW-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio, the reason for the self-censorship could be related to the fact that the Madison station is physically on the UW campus, in a UW building, and that some of the senior staff are university employees. The most obvious example is Larry Meiller, host of the Larry Meiller Show. Mieller is also a Professor, and the Director of Undergraduate Advising and Career Placement, and the Department Chair of UW-Madison's Department of Life Sciences Communications (LSC). You won't ever hear Meiller say something critical of the university's use of animals.

One of his common guests, and his co-host of Calling All Pets, is Patricia B. McConnell, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Zoology at the university. I remember once hearing them on the show laughing together about what was being done to rats in an experiment they were talking about. You can't expect to hear any criticism of the university's use of animals on that show either.

And things aren't any better at the Wisconsin State Journal. Ron Seely is the science and environment reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal and a Senior Lecturer at LSC. Seely ought to be talking about the treatment of animals at the university but steers clear of the issue. It's easy to see why.

And then there is Tom Still, former associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal and a currently a regular columnist in the business section. Still is a Lecturer at LSC.

Still is also president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, which has strong ties to the university. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Directors of the very creepy Wisconsin Security Research Consortium (WSRC), a UW sock puppet. Over the years, Still has been a defender of all things harmful to animals that might be economically profitable.

This incestuous intertwining of the university's interests with the programming and reporting in the Wisconsin State Journal and on Wisconsin Public Radio goes a long way to explaining why there isn't much local coverage or discussion of the problems at the university.

But the problem isn't just these obvious conflicts of interest.

UW-Madison's Department of Life Sciences Communications is worth digging into a bit. For instance, the statewide effort to recruit children and turn them into adults who like to kill animals, was apparently designed by staff at LSC:

A new initiative called the Hunters Network of Wisconsin, led by LSC Assistant Professor Bret Shaw, aims to understand how social networking technology may be used to promote hunter recruitment and retention in Wisconsin.....

"The Hunters Network of Wisconsin is targeting people who are interested in hunting but have not been raised in families that hunt,” said Bret Shaw, environmental communication specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Extension and assistant professor of life sciences communication at UW-Madison. “Many people, particularly young people, are heavy users of social networking technologies, and this may be an important way to inform them about hunter education opportunities in their local communities and connect with others who are interested in hunting,” said Shaw. "

It is interesting to read through some of the info at the LSC scimep lab (Science, Media and the Public.)

They explain that the lab is involved in "experimental studies of message processing and public understanding of controversial science, and long-term tracking of media coverage." But as far as I can tell, out of the approximately fifty papers from the lab over the course of its seven years of existence, there hasn't been even one paper concerning the public's perceptions of, or the media's framing, or anything whatsoever, regarding the use of animals in science. This is distinctly odd. The Department of Life Sciences Communications, the department's lab looking at public understanding of controversial science, the matter-of-fact reality that the use of animals is the epitome of controversial science, and yet nary a word. Maybe someone has alerted them to the institutional strategy of keeping the subject hushed up.

It is notable that investigators in a lab that is supposed to be involved in experimental studies and analysis of message processing and public understanding of controversial science aren't looking at the most controversial topics. They aren't looking into the messaging about and the public perception of abortion (When does an embryo begin to feel pain?) or medical testing on animals, or cloning animals, or the use of stem cells from human embryos, or even cloning humans. No, their big investigations and research are focused on the public's perception of nanotechnology. This might seem odd until one realizes that they aren't interested in the topic. They are interested only in how public opinions about controversial areas in science are formed, with the goal, apparently, of being able to manipulate them.

It seems to me that when taken together the unavoidable conflict of interests in media employing UW staff and quasi-staff to report on the university, the university's active encouragement of harming animals, their undeniable financial dependency on harming animals, and their managed propaganda campaign, it all adds up to a likely explanation for why all critical reporting has been dependent on one or two reporters independent enough to report the facts. Now that they have left the field, there is no one left who doesn't have their hand in the university's pocket in one way or another.

Vivisectors Love Animals - Part One

Vivisectors love animals and other lies the shitheads tell.

I recently attended a public presentation put on by Americans for Medical Progress (AMP; see the SourceWatch profile.) The presentation was in the Mount Horeb, Wisconsin Community Center. AMP's Executive Director, Paula Clifford, ran the show.

She started out with spin: "This is not about the ballot measure, not about defending any company." But everyone one in room know she was full of shit. In fact, she had a table full of pro-vivisection materials, and glued into the front cover of one glossy little booklet was this:

Local activists succeeded in getting enough signatures to put a measure on the Nov. 6 2018, ballot to add breeding dogs and cats for research to Mount Horeb's public nuisance ordinance. That's the only reason AMP had come to Mount Horeb, a town of about 7,000 people. Well, that and the fact that Mount Horeb is home to Ridglan Farms, a beagle breeding outfit that sells about 3,000 dogs a year to laboratories across the country.

The little booklet, produced by AMP's twin, the Foundation for Biomedical Research  is chocked full of misleading claims and assertions. (FBR; see the SourceWatch profile.) Here's the cover:

I have lots to say about the self-serving lies and misleading claims in the book, but here I want to point out something I learned from it that I either never knew or else put out of my mind because of its grotesque perversion.

I'll set the stage with this hypothetical case. First, some facts: The Republican National Committee reported receiving $118,753,927 in contributions for the 2018 election cycle. This money, seemingly, came from corporate and private donors. But, what if much of the RNC's funding came from federal agencies and public institutions receiving many large federal grants? And what if the Democratic National Committee didn't receive similar support? It seems to me that federal agencies and institutions receiving large federal and state grants ought not be allowed to give taxpayer money to political campaigns or to special interest lobbyists, and particularly not when the issue they are supporting is very controversial. And even more so when they have a vested financial interest in the matter.

The "Love Animals?" booklet says that the booklet has 176 co-sponsors; I take that to mean that FBR receives money from them to produce it:

But, it seems that they do receive government funding. While most of the listed co-sponsors are private corporations and companies involved in vivisection (Ridglan Farms is on the list), there are also taxpayer-funded institutions. Some, like Johns Hopkins University, the recipient of the largest amount of taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health, can probably play a shell game to disguise the source of the money they give to FBR, but others have a more narrow source of support.

For instance, on the list are the California, the Oregon, the Southwest, the Washington, the Yerkes, and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Centers. These labs receive most of their funding from the National Institutes of Health.

It seems inappropriate for public funds to be funneled to front groups that promote and defend controversial practices that half the public is opposed to. It seems transparently clear that the NIH primate centers are doing so out of self-interest. This seems to be yet another bit of evidence that those associated with the vivisection labs are unable to discern or uninterested in choosing the ethical course of action. This fits the pattern.

The Vilas Monkeys (Part Two)

The Vilas Monkeys (Part Two): The Ten-Year Anniversary of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Most Blatant Instance of Animal Cruelty and Lying to the Public. A Story of Cover-up, Conspiracy, Adultery, Battery, Disdain for Public Sentiment, and Crimes Too Unbelievable and Hideous to Discuss in Polite Company

Part Two

Let me add the example of the adult rhesus monkey females who will be treated in the next chapter. Their pen has a row of six large, reflecting observation windows near the ceiling, more than 5 meters above the floor. Every birth season, we see females place their newborn baby on the floor, walk a few steps, and intently stare up at one of the windows, shifting their head as if searching for a particular reflection. Then they pick up the baby again. They start doing this within a day or two of giving birth. All the windows are used for this activity, regardless of which one we are standing behind.

I cannot explain this behavior. Perhaps mothers like to have a look at their infant from a distance of more than 10 meters, without the risk of leaving him too far behind. They never stare at the windows in this particular way when carrying their baby, or when another female’s youngster is walking free. They seem to connect their own behavior (placing their offspring on the floor) to the mirror image. That they do not, like chimpanzees, use the mirror to look at their reflection may be a matter of how much interest they have in themselves compared to such attractive creatures as their new infants. Fox speculates that apes and humans may simply have reached a higher level of narcissism. (de Waal, 86-87.)

As I review the many news articles and documents generated by the Vilas monkey affair in 1997-98, I can’t help feeling a renewed sense of shock and surprise. The primate center (and by extension the UW itself) was so underhanded, so unethical, so disgustingly dismissive of public sentiment, that even now, ten years later, I’m dumbfounded by its arrogance and deep callousness. It is beyond belief that anyone could today believe anything they might claim.

Monkeys killed despite no-harm pledge
AIDS research:UW primates used for organs and tissues
Telegraph Herald. Sunday. August 10, 1997

MADISON (AP) - At least a dozen zoo monkeys were killed during University of Wisconsin AIDS experiments despite a pledge by administrators not to use them in harmful research, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The rhesus monkeys at the Henry Vilas Zoo were killed for their organs and tissue, by researchers at the UW Primate Research Center unidentified sources told The Capital Times.

UW-Madison owns the zoo's monkey house, which has about 150 rhesus monkeys and stump-tailed macaques used for observational research and public education.

The experiments occurred over a five-year period despite a June 15, 1989, letter that said the animals "will not be used in studies at our facility involving invasive experimental procedures." The newspaper said it was signed by seven primate center administrators. "Such animals will be assigned to the center's nonexperimental breeding colony, where they are exempt from experimental use." the letter said.

Primate center officials denied using the zoo monkeys for research that could harm them until The Capital Times obtained information that showed that monkeys were born at the zoo and died during research, the newspaper said.

Interim center director Joe Kemnitz said there were exceptions to the agreement that would allow some monkeys to be used in lethal research experiments.

Certain monkeys were used because they had unique qualities important to researchers Kemnitz said.

But Lenon and other officials could not produce written proof of any exceptions and zoo director Dave Hall said he could not recall any such exceptions to the 1989 letter.

After the public learned that the university had lied in 1989 when it had promised to stop using the Vilas zoo monkeys in invasive and terminal experiments and that it had continued to lie about the monkeys for eight years, the primate center colluded to some degree with the NIH, or perhaps manipulated the agency, into killing any funding for the care of the monkeys at the zoo.

In her August 13, 1997, official statement, then Graduate School Dean Virginia Hinshaw said:

The center's lease at the zoo is expected to expire in 2003, and we are currently working to find a long-term home that is best for the welfare of the animals and are committed to supporting the animals financially. But there is no quick resolution to this issue and finding an appropriate arrangement for the colony may take several years. [my emphasis, obviously]

On November 19, 1997, the UW issued a press release stating:

The National Institutes of Health will end a long tradition of funding the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center's monkey colony at Henry Vilas Park Zoo, effective Feb. 1. The decision will restrict the Primate Center from using funding from its $4.5 million base grant to maintain the Vilas Zoo colony. The facility costs approximately $100,000 a year to maintain, which includes personnel, food and supplies, and utility expenses. … "This decision puts us in a very difficult position," said Virginia Hinshaw, dean of the UW-Madison Graduate School. "The change in funding means that we have to work rapidly to find options for the colony."

When Hinshaw told the public: “we are currently working to find a long-term home that is best for the welfare of the animals and are committed to supporting the animals financially,” she was still lying, still telling the public what the university thought was expedient to tell us. The primate center and the university certainly did not then, or ever, have any commitment to the animals.

But the pure unadulterated filth of the university’s vivisectors isn’t clear until we put these conflicting lies into context. It wasn’t just the fact that the primate center had lied so baldly to the public for eight years, it wasn’t even the fact that once discovered in their lies that the vivisectors didn’t want to spend any money caring for animals that they couldn’t torture, no, it wasn’t just all that. The icing on this shit-cake was that over the period of time they were lying, they were selling the monkeys and banked somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars.

This amounts to not only a lie, but in a manner of speaking, grand larceny. And, after secretly selling these animals, not one thin dime could be found to feed them, to find them a safe home, to make amends with the public, to do at least one right thing.

Uw Reports Cash From Zoo Monkey Sales
Capital Times :: Front :: 1A
Saturday, August 23, 1997
By Scott Russell The Capital Times

The UW Primate Research Center made between $200,000 and $275,000 by selling off monkeys from Henry Vilas Zoo for research, according to data released Friday by the university.

Of the 110 monkeys sold over an eight-year period, 42 monkeys went to government agencies or outside universities, such as Harvard or East Carolina University. Another 35 monkeys were sold to private pharmaceutical companies, such as Hazleton [renamed Covance] Laboratories in Madison. The other 33 monkeys were used by UW-Madison researchers.

In June 1989, the primate center entered into an agreement with the zoo that none of the zoo monkeys would be used for invasive research. University officials have not disclosed the fate of the monkeys that were sold to other institutions.

Pharmaceutical labs in all likelihood tested the monkeys with drugs.

The zoo monkeys sold for between $1,800 and $2,500 each, depending on their age, their reproduction potential and their history, according to information released Friday by the UW-Madison.

On Aug. 11, after reports in The Capital Times, Graduate School Dean Virginia Hinshaw stopped any further assignment of monkeys from the zoo colony to invasive research.

One UW-Madison project that used zoo monkeys evaluated the effectiveness of a new medication for osteoporosis, the brittle-bone disease linked to calcium deficiency. The monkeys provided one way to test for the safety of the drug for human use.

Drug company Ciba-Giegy paid nearly $1 million for the 32-month study, which used 56 monkeys in all. Of those, 12 were monkeys from the zoo, including four monkeys that were covered by the no-invasive-research agreement. Of the 12 zoo monkeys used in the project, 10 were euthanized during the research. The other two died after the project ended.

Here's where the monkeys went:

Hazleton Laboratories, 20; East Carolina University, 15; Baxter-Travenol,15; UW-Madison Harlow Primate Lab, 14; UW-Madison Clinical Sciences Center, 12.

National Institutes of Health-Poolesville, 9; Boston University, 4; University of Pittsburgh, 4; UW-Madison Department of Psychology, 3; UW-Madison Medical School, 2; Harvard University, 2.

University of Iowa, 2; University of Minnesota, 2; Vanderbilt University,2; Waisman Center, 2; University of South Dakota, 1; University of Nebraska, 1.

The money generated by the sale of the monkeys went into the center's cost recovery account, which augments a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The majority of the money for that grant pays for animal services such as food, housing and care for the animals.

The ABCs of Opinion

Robert Streiffer rightly argues that attributing beliefs to people based on their actions may lead one to false conclusions about their beliefs.

[I]f you are attributing beliefs to people on the basis of their actions, rather than on what they say their beliefs are, it must be kept in mind that the actions in question are not the product of people’s beliefs about the moral status of NHPs taken in isolation. Rather, the actions are the product of (a) their beliefs about the moral status of NHPs, taken in conjunction with (b) their beliefs about the harms of research and (c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

His comment was in response to my claim that those conducting harmful experiments on monkeys or those approving the research – as Streiffer does in his role as an ACUC member – must believe that monkeys have almost no moral status and that even a researcher’s whim is sufficient justification for using monkeys or other animals in ways certain to harm them.

Streiffer strongly denied that he holds such a position. My perception and explanation for why he and others support experiments on monkeys must therefore, he seems to imply, be erroneous.

Helpfully, Streiffer identified three key factors that may influence the opinions of those who engage in or otherwise support primate experimentation (and by extension, the use of all animals):

(a) their beliefs about the moral status of NHPs [nonhuman primates] taken in conjunction with
(b) their beliefs about the harms of research and
(c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

Strieffer seems to be arguing albeit implicitly that words should have precedent over actions when trying to divine a person’s actual beliefs. He has in the past pointed to the language in the regulations governing the use of some animals in some research that appear on the surface to imply some ethical weighing. In actual fact, ethical weighing occurs rarely in research using animals but is overt and required in research using humans. See my essay "The Ethics Underpinning Oversight" November 28, 2010.

People’s actual, operational beliefs about the moral status of monkeys (or any other belief, it seems to me) can be determined or gleaned much more accurately by their actions in settings that give them an option of behaving one way or another. No matter what someone claims, their actions are telling. No matter how honest one claims to be, if he or she repeatedly engages in fraud, theft, plagiarism, lying, etc., claims of honesty will ring hollow.

It is common to hear from the industry that those using animals “respect” them and consider it a “privilege” to use them and wish there was some other way. But how would researchers at a university or elsewhere behave if they genuinely respected the animals they used? At a minimum, it seems reasonable to expect that surgical suites would be kept clean, yet UW-Madison has been cited recently by the USDA for not keeping such facilities clean.

People’s operational, as opposed to their stated beliefs about the moral status of animals can be surmised by observing their actions. In circumstances where one’s beliefs could be expected to guide one’s behavior, that behavior will be a more accurate measure of a person’s beliefs than their public claims.

Streiffer seems to imply that in most instances researchers may believe that the harms to the monkeys and other animals are not very great. But if this is true then they must be ignorant of the use of monkeys on the whole because even monkeys not used in an experiment suffer from chronic diarrhea and signs of confinement-induced stereotypic behavior (pacing, spinning, odd postures, over-grooming, etc) and self-mutilation. Just keeping monkeys in the typical laboratory setting is clearly and demonstrably harmful to them. See for instance Stereotypic and self-injurious behavior in rhesus macaques: a survey and retrospective analysis of environment and early experience. Lutz C, Well A, Novak M. American Journal of Primatology. 2003.

But maybe they actually do recognize that the harm is great, which I believe even a casual observer would recognize. If the harm is great, it appears that only Streiffer’s third point could salvage his claim that vivisectors don’t consider the monkeys used to have a very low moral status:(c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

Presumably, if they believe the research has low value, then we are back to the conclusion that they must not have much moral concern for the monkeys’ lives and experiences. So Streiffer must be arguing that the researchers and those who approve their work believe that the research has high value. (It certainly has high monetary value to the researchers and even greater monetary value to the university, but I take it that he is thinking in terms of benefit to human society and those suffering or who will in the future suffer from some malady that might be ameliorated through the knowledge gained during the experiments.)

The industry and its shills are wont to claim that essentially every advance in healthcare is the result of experiments on animals and moreover, research using animals is a veritable fount of new treatments and cures.

A more sober look at the history of medicine and public health coupled with the current concern over the woeful lack of results (benefiting actual patients) from basic research suggests something much different.

A friend recently asked me for a good citation for my observation that sanitation and providing clean water are far and away the most significant advances in public health, ever. I hadn’t made quite this bold of a statement, but I am now confident in doing so.

At the time, I referred him to Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, 1997. Norton. 426-427 passim, which I quote here:

Interpretations of the retreat first of epidemic diseases, and also of the increase in life expectancy, have been hotly debated. Some maintain the mass of the population was slowly but surely becoming less pauperized, and was enjoying better nourishment and hence improved health. Others argue that improving health was not due to rising prosperity but to better environmental salubrity due to public health measures, reducing the disease risks to which the hungry huddled masses were exposed.

Historians have distinguished between the retreats of epidemics in the eighteenth century and of endemic diseases in the nineteenth. Since plague was probably halted by the cordon sanitaire along the Habsburg border with the Ottoman empire, public health measures (‘medical police’) probably contributed to the reduction of epidemics. Smallpox vaccination from the early nineteenth century served to make epidemics less severe and frequent. The decline of plague and smallpox would thus have nothing to do with nutrition standards but some link with public health action. Endemic diseases such as tuberculosis and infant diarrhoea, by contrast, do seem to have been made more sever by under-nutrition. The reduction in such diseases might be linked to wage improvements. In either case little that personal physicians did was reflected in improved health.

Did public health measures actually do any good? The distinguished epidemiologist Thomas McKeown (1912 – 1988) maintained that reductions in deaths associated with infectious diseases (air-, water-, and food-borne diseases) cannot have been brought about by medical advances, since such diseases were declining long before effective means were available to combat them. Applying much the same argument to sanitary measures, McKeown concluded that resistance to infectious disease must have increased through improvement in nutrition. Overall he mapped out three phases: a rising standard of living from about 1770; sanitation measures from 1870; and better therapy during the twentieth century.

McKeown, however, underestimated the effectiveness of the public health movement. Changing public opinion, the labors of medical officers of health, the creation of filtered water supplies and sewage systems, slum clearance, the work of activists promoting the gospel of cleanliness, and myriad other often minor changes – for example the provision of dustbins with lids, to repel flies – combined to create an improving urban environment.

Porter’s observations are compelling to me, but I wasn’t fully satisfied that he presented the facts in a way that would lead an uncritical reader to the same conclusion as mine. As a consequence, I began reading a little more about the history of public health.

George Rosen’s 1958 A History of Public Health is a classic in the field. It was reprinted in an expanded edition by The Johns Hopkins University Press in 1993. With the expanded and helpful bibliographies (there are two) it is just over 500 pages in length. For those with an interest in this area of study, I recommend it; I have many pages marked and passages starred.

The introduction is written by Elizabeth Fee, Ph.D., Chief of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, NIH. In her introduction, she too mentions Thomas McKeown:

Rosen also asks whether the new scientific methods bore any relation to the actual decline in infectious diseases. This question was also to be addressed, and answered largely in the negative, in Thomas McKeown’s enormously influential book, The Modern Rise of Population, (1976.)

This citation first led me to Thomas McKeown and R. G. Record’s “Reasons for the Decline of Mortality in England and Wales During the Nineteenth Century.” Population Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2. (1962), pp. 94-122 which is an earlier less detailed account of McKeown’s thesis and includes some graphical data not in the later work. His thesis is more fully developed and a few potential errors corrected in The Modern Rise of Population.

McKeown’s work is not without its critics. Interestingly, and germane to the discussion here though, is the nature of the controversy. See for instance: The McKeown Thesis: A Historical Controversy and Its Enduring Influence. James Colgrove. American Journal of Public Health. 2002:

The consensus among most historians about the McKeown thesis a quarter century after it first stirred controversy is that one narrow aspect of it was correct—that curative medical measures played little role in mortality decline prior to the mid-20th century...

The ongoing interest in McKeown's ideas, not only among historians but also among policymakers addressing contemporary issues, is striking. What accounts for his work's remarkable durability? Why has the influence of the McKeown thesis persisted even after its conclusions were discredited? In part, his writing continues to generate responses because many scholars believe that although McKeown's analysis was flawed, his underlying ideas regarding the effects of poverty and economic well-being on health were essentially correct. More broadly, McKeown's influence has continued to be felt because his research posed a fundamental question that has lost none of its relevance in the decades since he began writing in the post–World War II era: Are public health ends better served by narrow interventions focused at the level of the individual or the community, or by broad measures to redistribute the social, political, and economic resources that exert such a profound influence on health status at the population level?

... Far from fading in prominence, the questions he raised have assumed new salience at the beginning of the 21st century, especially in debates about how best to confront health threats such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in the developing world. For example, commenting on the recent initiative to provide AIDS drugs in poor nations, a health activist based in Nepal summed up the 2 sides of this debate when he noted, “There has been an overemphasis . . . [on] drugs. The lack of drinking water is a much bigger priority in most countries than anti-retroviral treatments.”

McKeown argued that the dramatic decline in the death rate was due to the decline in mortality from infectious disease. On this point, there is wide agreement. The controversy arose because McKeown argued steadfastly that the largest share of this decline was unrelated to the work of the sanitary movement, but rather due to the decline in tuberculosis which he argued was the number one cause of death from infectious disease and that the decline was due largely to the improvement in diet.

The controversy is of absolutely no consequence to the well respected broadly acknowledged fact that there was a dramatic drop in the death rate from infectious disease prior to any accurate understanding of the cause of these diseases or effective treatments. Thus, experiments on animals played absolutely no role in the most dramatic drop in death rate in human history.

Readers of this blog will know that I am a fan of charts and graphs, and The Modern Rise of Population is full of them. Below is one that demonstrates the decline in deaths from whooping cough (Pertussis)

Keep in mind that the pro-vivisection organizations argue that essentially all medical progress is due to animal experimentation, and whooping cough is no exception. (Just google whooping cough animal research.) The whooping cough example has implications for the larger question at hand, namely the actual opinions of vivisectors vs their claimed opinions. I will come back to this below.In the meantime, consider the dramatic decline in mortality that occurred in the nineteenth century prior to any meaningful medical therapy or prophylaxis, or even knowledge of microorganisms, as a sort of bookend to the history of modern public health advancement, at the other end, is the modern critique of the basic research enterprise.

This second bookend is comprised of recent scientific papers and articles in the popular press such as:

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. David H. Friedman. Atlantic Monthly. 2010.

Where Are the Cures? Sharon Begley. Newsweek. 2008.

Comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: systematic review. Perel P, Roberts I, Sena E, Wheble P, Briscoe C, Sandercock P, Macleod M, Mignini LE, Jayaram P, Khan KS. BMJ. 2007.

Translation of Research Evidence From Animals to Humans. Daniel G. Hackam, Donald A. Redelmeier, 2006, JAMA.

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. John P. A. Ioannidis. PLoS Med. 2005.

Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans? Pound P, Ebrahim S, Sandercock P, Bracken MB, Roberts I. BMJ.

Does animal experimentation inform human healthcare? Observations from a systematic review of international animal experiments on fluid resuscitation. Roberts I, Kwan I, Evans P & Haig S. BMJ 2002.

At one end of this tableau is the largest decline in mortality in human history - in the absence of animal research, and at the other end, the promised benefits of the modern basic (animal) research paradigm are apparently lacking.

Between these bookends lies the entirety of modern medical research. I am not implying here that no benefit has resulted from the use of animals. For instance, Robert Koch’s 1879 paper on the etiology or cause of infectious disease was based on his work with animals. While his work resulted in no immediate advance in treatment, it did explain the phenomenal results and gave more authority and impetus to the hygienic/sanitation movement’s efforts.

The point in calling attention to the dramatic progress that occurred prior to Koch is that it demonstrates the real and significant progress that is possible without the use of animals. This severely undermines claims that animal experimentation is necessary. The growing body of systematic reviews and reports questioning the overall results of basic research implies that the value of the research that is taking place is suspect.

This takes us back to Streiffer’s third point: That researchers and their supporters’ beliefs about the moral status of NHPs must be considered in conjunction with (c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

It seems to me that an informed unbiased observer would have to seriously question the value of research with monkeys (or any animals) in light of the history of public health and the crisis the basic research enterprise is facing. Claiming that the value of the research is high seems unreasonable and unsupportable.

Look again at the graph depicting the decline in deaths from whooping cough.

I believe that if there were no vaccine for whooping cough, that research using animals would be underway today in the effort to produce one. This is a hypothetical situation, but given the small number of people afflicted with some of the maladies being studied today, I think it is a reasonable assumption.

If it is, then we can look at the graph as a sort of measure of the actual sympathy and moral concern those who propose, approve, and engage in animal experimentation actually hold for the animals they use.

By the time the vaccine was generally available, the mortality rate had already collapsed. Yet someone asking for permission to use monkeys to develop a vaccine today, assuming there wasn't one, would – without any doubt – be given the go-ahead, even though the disease is no longer a major threat. That is, even a relatively insignificant gain would be deemed adequate justification to infect and kill monkeys.

If you think this is an unreasonable assumption, consider the very limited importance and value of UW-Madison primate vivisector Richard Wiendruch’s caloric restriction studies.

In summary, Robert Streiffer accurately I think observed that when attributing beliefs [about the moral status of monkeys] to people on the basis of their actions, rather than on what they say their beliefs are, it must be kept in mind that the actions in question are not the product of people’s beliefs about the moral status of NHPs taken in isolation. Rather, the actions are the product of (a) their beliefs about the moral status of NHPs, taken in conjunction with (b) their beliefs about the harms of research and (c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

Given the very real demonstrable harms and the information available regarding the questionable value of the research, it is fair and likely accurate to surmise that those using monkeys and approving their use have very little actual sympathy or moral concern for them, in spite of public pronouncements to the contrary.

UW-Madison, Feeling the Heat

I've been a reasonably close observer of the University of Wisconsin, Madison's use of animals and the things they say about it for quite a while. Over the years, I've watched them lie, pay-off critics, cover-up scandals, strike back at whistle-blowers, censor the information that the law forces them to provide to the public, spend large sums to keep themselves out of a critical spotlight, and just generally cringe whenever the light of day exposes a few tiny details of their very dark world.

One metric of the effect of public criticism on the university is its response to those criticisms. The more they try to defend themselves, the more likely it is that public comment from critics is making them uncomfortable. In my experience, they have never chosen to say too much in public, and rarer still, in the local papers, about what they are doing to animals unless pressed by a news reporter who they believe is going to write something that they fear could be embarrassing to them. This makes Research Animal Resource Center Director Eric Sandgren's two online essays about the university's decision to resurrect its use of maternal deprivation all the more noteworthy. They must be feeling some concern over the growing number of critical voices.

I appreciate Sandgren and his writing team taking the time to defend the university, the people who approved the study, and Ned Kalin. Their assertions provide an opportunity to look at their claims and omissions with some specificity.

Sandgren's two essays can be read here: "Mundane but important facts about the peer-rearing animal protocol review," and here: "The rest of the story."

Sandgren's apology begins with a well-worn bit of misdirection. He says, "Regardless of whether one supports or opposes the research, we can agree that it raises important ethical issues that deserve an open and informed discussion."

That sounds so very reasonable, except that in a case like this, open and informed discussion is meaningful only when it occurs prior to a decision, and particularly so when it's very obvious that the decision will be controversial. After the fact, giving lip service to the notion of open and informed discussion is just plain old spin.

A recurring theme in their post-hoc defense of their decision to approve Kalin's use of maternal deprivation is the claim that taking baby monkeys away from their mothers, keeping them alone, and then pairing them with other babies who were taken away from their mothers just isn't such a big deal:

Sandgren, in "Mundane": "the proposed studies produce at most a moderate early life stress... peer-rearing actually is used to save a monkey’s life when a mother rhesus rejects its infant and a foster mother cannot be found." (A mother monkey isn't an it.)

And then again in "The rest": "this same approach is taken to rearing baby rhesus monkeys whose mothers reject them at birth and who are not adopted by a foster mother. In other words, sometimes peer-rearing is used to save a baby monkey’s life."

This claim is both wrong and very odd; Sandgren seems to be saying that loneliness itself is life threatening, but decades of horribly cruel social deprivation experiments at UW-Madison proved repeatedly and redundantly that it isn't. A baby monkey taken from his or her mother could starve to death, of course, but putting him or her with another orphaned baby doesn't alleviate that risk and placing him or her with another orphan wouldn't save the baby's life.

Moreover and very distasteful, is the implicit claim that there is a concern for an orphaned baby monkey's life. This is one of those cases when someone uses words to mislead, or else is completely unaware that they are using words that has one commonly understood meaning and a much different one elsewhere.

The only reason they take steps to save a baby monkey's life is so that they can decide for themselves later on how to kill him after using him in some income-generating experiment.

Another recurring claim in their public statements is the assertion that the babies aren't really being socially deprived.

Sandgren: "The monkeys are not kept in total isolation. They are reared in a human-style baby incubator by people who feed and otherwise care for these infants...".

This is a very fine point. It is a reference to previous decades of egregious cruelty at the university that most readers will miss. In many past experiments, babies were taken from their mothers and kept in complete isolation for extended periods of time, being unable even to see the person who replenished their food and water. But the claim that the current methods aren't actually cruel because even more horrible things were done to monkeys in the past is a fallacy; it is probably being repeated so often because university spin-Meisters believe it will mollify critics or at least mislead the average reader or listener.

They should have done their homework. The effects of maternal deprivation are well-known; a few brief daily visits from a technician aren't sufficient to rectify them. The human-based evidence of this fact is extensive and has been well known since at least the early 1950s. Even today, studies continue to document the long-term consequences to humans when they are reared in far less-deprived circumstances and to determine the most effective routes to improved emotional well being:

The individuals’ development is continuous, genetically determined and environmentally structured and responsive. Institutionalization of infants and young children in ‘adverse conditions’ provides an environment with low emotional tones and poor stimulation with lack of sufficient responsive caretaking. John Bowlby’s seminal work “Child Care and Growth of Love” written in 1951 and later updated in 1965 with two additional chapters by Mary Ainsworth states deprivation results from lack of substitute mother, inadequate, inconsistent care and lack of sensitive nurturing. In early institutionalization, we can speak about “parental deprivation” instead of “maternal deprivation” as the paternal figure can successfully substitute that of the mother. Studies on the effects of maternal deprivation in the first year of life demonstrate that children show delayed psychomotor and speech development, lack of novelty seeking, poor emotional expression, lack basic trust and they do not seek adults when in distress. These effects are also evident in observations of children institutionalized between 1 and 4 years of age who show the three phases of Protests, Despair and Detachment. Romanian adolescents: literature review and psychiatric presentation of Romanian adolescents adopted in Romania and in Canada. Iftene F, Roberts N. Can Child Adolesc Psychiatr Rev.

In the case of rhesus monkeys, the research is also clear:

Different species of nonhuman primates vary in their response to different nursery rearing conditions. However, studies conducted for over 30 y have shown that in general, raising infants in pairs continuously with the same partner causes behavioral deficiencies. Compared with those raised by using other rearing methods, these infants showed more fear, social withdrawal, aggression, and less nonsocial exploration in this and other studies examining this rearing condition. These differences were thought to be due to the infants' excessive and persistent partner clinging, which precluded independent exploration. Although clinging was initiated by both partners equally often, infants were physically unable to break the clasp of their partners. In addition, infants who received partner clinging often responded to their partner's behavior with aggression.... The effects of four nursery rearing strategies on infant behavioral development in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Rommeck I, Gottlieb DH, Strand SC, McCowan B.J Am Assoc Lab Anim Sci. 2009.

Sandgren's use of the term "a human-style baby incubator" is also misleading. Human babies in incubators are cared for much differently than the monkeys isolated in the so-called human-style incubators at the university monkey labs. There is a growing trend to provide human infants confined to an incubator with frequent massage and physical stimulation.

Additionally, rhesus monkeys mature more rapidly than humans. This could mean that the subjective experience of being kept alone for the first six weeks of life is much more stressful for a rhesus monkey than it would be for a human.

Sandgren goes on to claim that "clinical records show that, in the UW-Madison colony, peer-rearing typically only is associated with thumb sucking behavior (just one young monkey in 10 years injured herself, and she recovered). Peer-rearing will measurably increase anxiety, as required by the experimental design ...".

As I have pointed out many times, the university and its spokespersons, including Sandgren, have a history of telling lies when the lies serve the interests of the university. There is no reason to believe his anecdotal claim about what the clinical records show. If the records substantiate his claim, the university should make them public; to know whether they genuinely demonstrate what he claims, Sandgren would have to make the daily care records, animal care staff comments, and the veterinary records available for public inspection and consideration. Short of such a full disclosure, their history of lying to the public suggests quite strongly that this claim is just more of the same.

In "The rest," Sandgren takes the writer of an Animal Legal Defense Fund blog to task for using the word "relentless." He writes:

The monkeys are not subjected to 'relentless fear'. Instead, approximately once a month for up to 18 months their reaction to a novel situation is observed. What are these novel situations? An unfamiliar human stands in front of their cage. An unfamiliar monkey is housed in an adjoining cage, or the two are housed together in a play cage. And one time, the monkey can see a snake, closed within a solid glass aquarium that sits outside the monkey’s cage. That does not constitute relentless fear.

Once again, Sandgren spins what he knows, or ought to know, to be otherwise. These so-called novel situations were not chosen because of their novelty.

Kalin has been using these "novel" methods for decades. Here's how he explains why he uses an "unfamiliar human":

When threatened, primates commonly engage in behavioral inhibition or freezing behavior. Freezing is an automatic response characterized by the cessation of motor and vocal activity. In monkeys, individual differences in freezing duration are stable over time and reflect individual levels of anxiety. Adaptive freezing helps an individual remain inconspicuous and decreases the likelihood of predatorial attack; however, excessive freezing, or behavioral inhibition, is a risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders. The human intruder paradigm was developed to study primates’ defensive behaviors, such as freezing, and their regulation in response to changing environmental demands... Brain regions associated with the expression and contextual regulation of anxiety in primates. Kalin NH, Shelton SE, Fox AS, Oakes TR, Davidson RJ. Biol Psychiatry. 2005

And compare Sandgren's description of how and why the snake will be used with Kalin's:

During the snake exposure test, animals will be placed in the small primate cage. The testing apparatus will be placed in front of the cage and the animals will be presented with their most preferred food items placed on top of a clear plastic box at contains a stimulus such as a live snake, rubber snake, roll of tape or nothing. Our previous work has shown that each of these items elicits a response in primates, with the live snake eliciting the most reliable and robust fear response. [Kalin cites published scientific papers at this point in his description, but the citations have been censored by the university.] The items that are not fearful or those that elicit lesser responses are included as comparison and control measures to quantitate the magnitude of the animals' response to the live snake. From Kalin's approved protocol, "Effects of early experience on the development of anxiety and its neural substrates." Pg 18.

Everything Kalin is doing to the babies is intended to cause them anxiety and fear. He expects this ordeal to cause their brains to develop differently than the brains of monkeys not similarly deprived and frightened. Are the fearful experiences relentless? Not in the sense that they continue around-the-clock, but certainly so in the sense that they are frequent and recurring events in these young victims' short and intentionally difficult lives.

After trying to mislead people about the nature of the deprived conditions and stress-filled experiences of the babies, Sandgren then launches into an attempt to justify the cruelty. And again, he either misunderstands what Kalin is claiming or else is just again being a propagandist for his employer and industry.

He begins in "The rest" with an appeal to Kalin et al's past work. he says, "In previous studies, these UW-Madison researchers mapped out pathways in the brain that are overactive in anxious monkeys (it turns out the same pathways are overactive in anxious humans too)." But again, he misleads.

Kalin's experiments on monkeys did not inform scientists about humans' brains; the exact opposite is true. Here's Kalin's quote from "The Neurobiology of Fear," a 2002 Scientific American article that was update from a 1993 article:

To follow up on the finding that humans with a preponderance of right frontal brain electrical activity are more likely to be anxious, we, along with [Richard] Davidson, examined the individual differences in this measure of brain activity in young monkeys. Similar to the observations in humans, we found that each animal's pattern of frontal brain activity was stable over time, such that animals with extreme asymmetric right frontal activity remained that way as they matured.

Continuing his defense of Kalin's project in "Mundane," Sandgren claims that the project has a clear scientific rationale. But he is not unfamiliar with the rationale Kalin used in his letter to a reporter with The Capital Times newspaper:

It is now widely accepted that early stressful environments that include parental stress, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, neglect and inadequate parenting are the most relevant risk factors for the later development of psychiatric illness. Unfortunately, this type of adversity during childhood is endemic in our society. These early adverse circumstances can change the trajectory of a developing brain such that it becomes wired in a way that leads less fortunate individuals down a path of anxiety, depression and other forms of psychopathology. Discovering new interventions aimed at preventing the long term consequences of early adversity in children is critical and requires a basic understanding of the influences of suboptimal rearing on the primate brain. Recent advances in neuroscience and molecular neurobiology allow us, for the first time, to identify promising new molecular pathways that have the potential to counter the effects of early adversity on childhood development.

Kalin rationalizes his cruelty with the wild claim that the identification of irregularities in the brains of orphaned male rhesus monkeys isolated during the first weeks of their lives, and then repeatedly frightened, will lead to a drug (that's what is implied by his "new molecular pathways") that will cure or prevent the highly variable results that stem from the even more variable circumstances surrounding "early stressful environments that include parental stress, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, neglect and inadequate parenting." That sounds more like pie-in-the-sky than a clear scientific rationale.

Even sillier is Sandgren's faith-based assertion: "this study also will be highly relevant to the causes of anxiety in humans." But he doesn't know this. His assertion is anything but scientific or rational. He plays the role of the soothsayer. The majority of the results from attempts to measure the efficacy of animal models of human biology point strongly to the opposite likelihood.

Moreover, the apparent absence of clear beneficial results for human sufferers of emotional distress that stem from Kalin's decades of previous work using monkeys as models of anxiety and fear in humans stands in stark contrast to both his and Sandgren's assertions that anything of benefit to human patients will result. If there were much to ballyhoo from his previous projects with monkeys, I suspect it would have been mentioned by now, by someone, in neon lights.

Sandgren argues at some length in "Mundane" that oversight of research using animals by the university's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) is not just a rubber stamp. He both admits and denies that essentially all proposed experiments are approved.

First he quotes Wesleyan University Professor of Philosophy Lori Gruen: “the oversight committee chairs [at UW-Madison] told me they have never rejected a proposal. Not one.”

Then he says: "When our IACUC chairs say “failure to reject”, they mean that almost all protocols eventually reach a state that the IACUC can accept.

Then he says: "Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that our IACUCs reject 92 percent of the proposals they receive."

But his argument that the oversight system is working boils down to this: The committees eventually approve essentially every experiment that comes before them, even one that is as controversial as Kalin's. A duck, he seems to be saying, is not a duck.

Vivisectors have a very unscientific habit of ignoring evidence that does not support their self-image. Research shows that the use of animals isn't a very productive methodology. Research shows that IACUC committees do seem to act as rubber stamps. Research shows that the workers within the system are uncomfortable with and often embarrassed by what they are forced to do. Research shows that a system like the one surrounding the use of animals at a university will breed secrecy, cruelty, and public denial.

The university must be feeling the heat. As a result, Sandgren has tried to spin the plain facts and has presented false and misleading claims without presenting anything other than anecdotal claims and expressions of his faith and obedience in support. It is worth noticing that he did not point readers to Kalin's approved protocol; that information was made public by the Alliance for Animals.

The University of Wisconsin, Madison has a long, well-documented, and entirely despicable history when it comes to honesty and openness about its use of animals. Sandgren's two essays are simply the newest chapter in this (so far) never ending story of their cruelty.