The AWA: Fostering mediocrity and suffering

Many moons ago when I worked at an unnamed insurance company, they actually did time motion studies of the workers to figure out how long it “should” take to adjust a hospital claim, for example. They’d send a special engineer down to watch you with a stopwatch and check sheet. “Now tell me what you do when you get a durable medical equipment claim? How many do you see each week? Why did you route that claim for utilization review?”

The more I was treated like a cog, and the less my thinking was valued, the more I performed like the “average” employee - something I was not. I stopped wearing suits and volunteering to be on committees, taking extra classes, etc. I started wearing stretch pants and sweaters and paced myself so that I did exactly the number of things that I needed to do to be “within range.” I volunteered for lay offs when they announced a merger. And when I didn’t get that lay off, I staged even more of “slow down.” Average is easy, but it's boring and soul-killing. Eventually I was released from Bare Minimum Corp. I embarked on 10 years of education - where life can be about more than "average."

I’m really not interested in working in an environment like that ever again. Any system based on achieving minimum performance will consistently produce minimum performance. Take the Animal Welfare Act for example. The Act more or less states that if facilities make cages this big, keep this paper work, file these reports, etc., they are fine. There’s no “excellent,” there’s just “no deficiencies.” When performance targets are lame to begin with, as they are with the Act, we end up a long way from excellence.

We might get consistent results, but it's not assured. What is assured is that we will never get newer, bigger, better results. Consistent crap is crap all the same. The top ten percent of shit is shit. Why set your organization up for a whole lotta "average?" Hoping that it will lead to success or excellence is just foolish.

UW on probation for animal lab violations

The University of Washington has been put on probation for
widespread violations in its animal laboratory facilities, which
include its Washington Primate Research Center and several other
sites for other animal research.

More from the article:

Debra Durham, a researcher and investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Seattle, said the university's claims are preposterous and the program suffers from a systemic problem that spans decades.

"I get frustrated with the fact that they push it off as growing pains or shortage of money when animals' lives are on the line," she said.

"If you don't have the infrastructure to take on a task, the responsible thing is not to do it."

Among other findings in the report:


Only a taped line on a hallway floor separated HIV-infected primates and dirty primate cages from workers carrying their lunches to a break room, which "created the potential for humans to be exposed to the health risks associated with non-human primates."


There was no pre-employment medical evaluation or ongoing medical evaluations of lab workers who were routinely exposed to allergens.


On one floor of the Health Sciences Building, "the odor and level of dust in many of the rooms was intense."


The majority of rooms on that floor were "significantly overcrowded, creating the potential for worker injury and inconsistencies in environmental conditions for the animals."

* Read the full article at:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/303462_uwlabtest13.html

Sneak Peek: UConn experiments terminated in wake of violations

After more than a year of demonstrations, letter writing, pleas to the administration and a half dozen USDA inspections, monkey experiments at U Conn have been terminated.

From an article in TheScientist:

Waitzman's trouble with the USDA began in the fall of 2005 when one of his macaques died unexpectedly after an electrode was removed from his brain, leading to uncontrollable seizures. When UConn graduate student and animal rights activist Justin Goodman found out about the incident (after submitting a Freedom of Information Act request), he sent the agency a letter demanding the lab be investigated. Goodman and other activists have protested and pushed the administration for over a year to shut the lab down.

The USDA has since visited UConn nearly a half dozen times on random inspections. In March, 2006, the USDA demanded that Waitzman update his protocol and prove that his methods were within regulations. Waitzman responded with a 15-page treatise, which was accepted by the USDA.

See the full story in TheScientist: A scientist suspends his ocular motor system research after numerous USDA citations

The animal advocates who worked on this issue documented the process on the web, noting demonstration, letters written, etc. You can check it out at their website. The group is still working to have the one surviving monkey from the experiment placed in sanctuary.

Primates' namesake defends abuse at Harvard

Harvard is one of the wealthiest universities in the country, and yet apparently unable to follow even the most minimal welfare guidelines for animals, i.e. those provided by the Animal Welfare Act.

"Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN) cited 32 federal violations by Harvard in a nine-month period. The violations included cases in which a “researcher strangled a primate through negligence, monkeys are deprived of water, rabbits and wallaby’s receive improper anesthesia."

A story in the Harvard student paper, The Crimson, carried the story about SAEN's announcement. A university representative was contacted for response. You will NOT believe the fellow's name: Gibbons. Gibbons? You are kidding me. That's like someone who runs a dry cleaning business being named Bob Grungy, or a dentist named Susie Snagglepuss. He seems convinced that things like pain management or a failing to observe an animal to ensure his safety are unproblematic.

A Harvard Medical School spokesman, Don L. Gibbons, contested the validity of the report, claiming that all but one of the violations were reported because of clerical errors, and did not actually involve animal abuse.

The one exception was the incident of the asphyxiated primate, which Gibbons called “an unfortunate accident.”

A death that could have been prevented if someone would have been paying attention is unfortunate?

In the experiment, a monkey was drinking grape juice through a hose and “loved the grape juice so much, it stuffed the tube down its throat,” Gibbons said.

The researcher could only see the back of the monkey’s head and didn’t realize the monkey was suffocating until it was too late, according to Gibbons.

Parched with thirst, desperate for anything to drink...that's no accident, pal.

Breaking News: 'Monkey Business' Ends At UConn Health Center

The Daily Campus - 'Monkey Business' Ends At UConn Health Center:

Good news from CT today:

The controversial research on non-human primates at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) has been stopped.

The research, which involved implanting coils into the eyes of rhesus macaque monkeys and drilling a hole into their heads, has been the subject of many protests, led in large part by UConn graduate student Justin Goodman.

According to documents from the USDA and the UCHC Animal Care Committee, the USDA made an inspection of the research facility on Aug. 29. Two days later on Aug. 31, Dr. David Waitzman, who was in charge of the research, voluntarily stopped his experiments. Then, on Sept. 6, UConn's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee revoked Waitzman's ability to continue the research.

The committee's decision came more than four months after UConn President Philip Austin said in a May 2 letter to the university community that UConn has 'dealt successfully with problems related to research animal care.'

According to Goodman, the USDA has now launched a formal investigation into the research, which can result in a formal charge with the Secretary of Agriculture as well as fines for the UCHC."

Poor predictors of human outcomes

From an LTE in response to Monday's article on primate testing at SNBL:

My last complaint is with Meyers' claims of good science. Even if we ignore the USDA violations for the moment, something few would be willing to do if the details had been reported, the science is dubious. Readers deserve a realistic view of what the so-called "good science" really achieves.

The FDA itself has reported that over 90 percent of drugs tested in animals eventually prove to be unsafe or ineffective in human trials. This figure doesn't even include drugs that get approved and then later get recalled. Let's not forget that Vioxx was tested in monkeys and went on to be a disaster. Recent independent studies published in highly respected medical journals, JAMA and BMJ, reported that animal tests were poorly designed and executed, and utterly miserable at predicting outcomes for people.

Click here for full letter - Animal Testing: Poor predictors of human outcomes

Campaign against primate experimentation: UConn

Local activists who have uncovered shoddy animal care and other USDA violations at UCHC have created a web site about their campaign. They have done an amazing job putting together information and exposing abuse and deaths at this facility. Check them out!

USDA violations and animal deaths at Charles River

Culture of humane animal care? What kind of response is that to violations?

TownOnline.com - Local News: Alleged abuse at Charles River