OPINION & EDITORIAL
Szarzynski has facts all wrong
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by Letters to the Editor
Friday, February 8, 2008
Kyle Szarzynski’s column (“Animal torture: Another shameful UW institution,” Feb. 6) deserves a response, if only to help Mr. Szarzynski learn what it means to write an objective and fact-based opinion piece. He pretty much got everything wrong.
First, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is a special interest group that excels at fundraising, but — as I have learned from personal experience — has little regard for the truth. Their “ranking” of worst animal laboratories, which the University of Wisconsin topped, is all about their political and fundraising agendas. In fact, they were responsible for collecting dogs and cats from animal shelters, promising to find them homes, then killing them in the back of a van and throwing their bodies into dumpsters. They have no credibility in running or judging an animal program.
Second, if you wish to develop a balanced view of the work of Harry Harlow, read Deborah Blum’s “Love at Goon Park.” She is a member of the UW faculty and intensively researched the man and his work. She identified both the bad and the good in what he did.
Third, regarding the UW response to criticism for the 2005 pig Taser study, who did you ask about how I responded at that time? You certainly never contacted me, yet you report that I ignored it.
In fact, I spent nearly a hundred hours — including time talking with a representative of PETA — to make certain that the study was well justified, well designed, objective and would not result in pain or suffering to the pigs. All procedures are performed under anesthesia, and the pigs never wake up after the surgery.
Also, who did you speak with to form the basis of your statement that “Tasering pigs produces no useful information about similar effects on humans”? The last time I spoke with investigators in this study, they described several discoveries with direct relevance to humans. Did you just pull your statement out of the thin, cold, snowy air?
Fourth, you call me an apologist for animal cruelty. Actually, my position as director of the Research Animals Resources Center is to monitor how animals are treated in research, teach, give outreach and specifically prevent cruelty. Animal research is more heavily regulated than hospitals.
When we, the USDA or anyone else suspect errors in how we run the program, it is my desire and reasonability, shared with many others, to investigate, correct and sometimes take disciplinary action if warranted by a failure in our system. I admit to the errors publicly (perhaps you should read your own newspaper more carefully), work with animal program team members to fix the error and try to find ways to make certain it doesn’t happen again.
I also explain to anyone who asks what constitutes an animal program, how we are regulated internally and externally, and what link exists between the research that we perform and usefulness of the findings. Willingness to communicate does not equal being an apologist.
Fifth, have you ever attended one of our Animal Care and Use Committee meetings? Or even asked to? These meetings are open, and each month one or several members of the public are present at them. The complaint filed about how we run our meetings was not successful. In fact, we have become more open over the last several years. I’ve been involved in two public debates with animal activists. The hundreds of scientific publications each year that involve animal research at this university show us to be the opposite of surreptitious.
Why didn’t you just stick with your last two paragraphs? You have a right to your opinion about animal testing — as does everyone. Go ahead and be passionate about your beliefs. But don’t use incorrect, poorly researched statements to mislead your readers.
Eric Sandgren
Director of the Research Animals Resources Center
University of Wisconsin
sandgren@rarc.wisc.edu
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 3:17am):
I believe TASER SAVES LIVES EVERYDAY but I see no value in cutting open the chest on pigs and directly shocking their heart for 80 seconds and then suggesting this is some kind of benefical Taser research. This is VooDoo science without value.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 8:12am):
PETA is a fellow traveller to those who would murder humans to promote animal welfare.
They are disgusting as well as unethical.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 9:55am):
Ding ding ding, and Kyle is out for the count.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 10:02am):
I really wish the Herald would demand more of Mr. Szarzynski. I stopped reading his columns when I came to realize that I had nothing at all to learn from someone so prone to hyperbole and convinced of his absolute intellectual supremacy. Now I realize I should keep reading his columns, just so I can more-easily follow the corrections that appear a couple days later.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 11:09am):
"Animal research is more heavily regulated than hospitals."
PETA likes it that way, since they believe that animals are more important than humans.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 1:53pm):
Bravo.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 2:41pm):
Thank you Eric, for your honesty, integrity, and technical excellence in this essential research field.
Medical research using animal surrogates continues to be the target of deceitful defamation by the animal 'rights' fanatics, as do all forms of animal husbandry. What these zealots lack in facts and integrity, they attempt to remediate with opinions wrapped in lies. They operate on the all-too-often-true proposition that a lie told convincingly and often will appear to be the truth to the gullible and otherwise uniformed. As Abe Lincoln noted "You can fool some of the people all of the time!". The fund raising efforts of PETA and similar groups are predicated on it.
Thank you for directly addressing the editorial malfeasance of Mr. Szarzynski! A nation of citizens benefiting from the fruits of animal-based medical research is forever indebted to you and your colleagues!
Kyle Szarzynski (February 8, 2008 @ 2:41pm):
That this article is just one, long non sequitur should be evident to any pair of eyes that at least glazed over the first few paragraphs. Mr. Sangren concludes that the original piece was factually inaccurate, and then goes on to prove nothing of the sort. (By the way, I don't object to his allegation that it wasn't "objective." Opinion pieces aren't supposed to be. That I oppose animal torture was meant to be made clear from the first sentence).
His criticism of PETA is the typical nonsense espoused by, yes, the apologists for aniaml cruelty. Defending PETA against the one isolated incident that the likes of Mr. Sangren are always ready to pull out of their back pocket is for another time, though it should be obvious that this constitutes a rather pathetic attempt to smear the entire struggle for animal rights. PETA isn't the issue. It's their claim about UW's facilities that matters. But nice try.
As for the Taser experiment, after reading extensive reports about the events of 2005 I would say, again, that Mr. Sangren "ignored" the criticism. Even after the courageous UW Professor Terry Younge publicly came out against the study in an open letter to Chancellor Wiley, and even after animal rights' groups from across the country voiced their concern with the idea of Tasering pigs, Mr. Sangren somehow kept his head high and allowed the barbarism to ensue.
And, yes, the experiments, like 99% of their kind, were utterly pointless in the end. As it turned out, pig skin is different from human skin (surprising, I know), rendering the results unhelpful for law enforcement as Dr. Webster, the head of the study, admitted as much. (The experiments were originally conducted to find out why so many people, app. 70 a year at the time, were being killed by Tasers at the hands of the police. Why not just stop using them?)
The paid Taser staff that were originally involved in the study were, as many pointed out at the time, particularly troublesome. I wouldn't have thought that brutalizing defenseless animals could get any more sinister and despicable, but by adding this faceless corporate element to it, Mr. Sangren was - quite brilliantly - able to do just that. Congrats.
As for the rest of the original article, Mr. Sangren doesn't address, despite labelling the whole thing as factually inaccurate. The rest of the complaints - drilling holes in the heads of primates, not using pain medication, etc. - all came directly from the USDA, so any response would have been effectively worthless.
In sum, I would say that Mr. Sangren and his department are in the the not-so-proud tradition of Dr. Harlow, a distinction of which I have a sickening feeling is going to be taken as a compliment.
szarzynski@wisc.edu
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 3:29pm):
Give this guy an opinion column. I like how he knows stuff.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 4:02pm):
"Phfft! Facts. You can use them to prove anything."
-- Homer Simpson
Eric Sandgren (February 8, 2008 @ 5:17pm):
Even in his response to my letter, Mr.Szarzynski gets his facts wrong. PETA IS an issue, if their behavior and agenda render them incompetent to judge UW facilities.
Regarding the taser studies, I repeat, which scientist did you speak to about the study's results? Apparently none, since the study has produced very relevant information. Furthermore, there was no corporate interference in the conduct or interpretation of the taser study, as I pointed out publicly at the time of that false accusation. Dr. Young's letter to the chancellor took its information from PETA, which proved to be grossly inaccurate. And by the way, the study doesn't apply current to pig skin--another thing you got wrong.
You say "why not just stop using [Tasers]?" Does that mean you are in favor of using more bullets? I'd rather try to make the method safer.
Regarding the USDA report, I have spent several hours discussing that with individuals, including a reporter from your paper. Funny, but there were no messages from you asking about it.
But I suspect the most direct proof regarding who to trust about details is the fact that I could spell your name correctly, while you got mine right only one time out of ten.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 5:21pm):
Wait...you never actually disprove anything that Kyle said in his column. You did a wonderful job defending your ethics when it comes to animal cruelty, but, other than that...not much? You did manage to besmirch PETA's reputation, though that's not all that hard. You also managed to put the ranking in perspective, but finally failed to disprove Kyle's facts.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 5:45pm):
I always find these debates interesting when the parties involved are so removed from the actual research going on at this campus. I doubt Mr. Szarzynski has ever put enough effort into his research on this topic to speak with someone who actually participates in the animal research on a daily basis.
If Mr. Szarzynski would like evidence of some actual cruelty in this world, perhaps he should turn on the news and do some research on what is going on in Kenya, for example. Write an opinion column on something worthwhile that is actually NEGATIVELY affecting people's lives. Then again, animal rights activists care more about nonhumans than they do about their fellow man.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 5:56pm):
Deborah Blums Love at Goon Park was little more than spin, carefully eliminating references to Harlow's earlier whole body radiation experiments on monkeys and his experimental brain lesioning studies. She tried to paint a picture of a slow downward spiral into experiments of questionable ethics and morality as a result of his alcoholism. He was cruel from the start of his career.
Further, she claimed that in spite of his cruel experiments in isolation and deprivation that something of benefit to human children was learned. This is factually incorrect. Harlow entered the debate after people like Spitz and Bowlby had demonstrated clearly -- and whose conclusions had been endorsed by the World Health Organization -- that children need contact and nurturing. Harlow entered the debate even after Dr. Spock's Baby Book became a runaway national best seller. Harlow entered the debate only when psychologists began theorizing about the reasons that children need nurturing, not whether or not they do; that was well established long prior to Harlow's work, making his career at the UW even more disturbing.
Blum's spin of Harlow and of the industry generally in "Monkey Wars," is excellent propaganda and includes much accurate detail, unfortunately, her writing is more pr than journalism and is creatively edited to create a misleading impression of primate vivisectors.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 6:11pm):
kyle,
you're always so angry. next week, write a column about something that makes you happy. deal? ok.
have a good weekend, buddy!
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 6:26pm):
"Animal research is more heavily regulated than hospitals."
There seem to be two possible conclusions we can draw from Eric's claim:
1. Society cares more about animals in research than they do about loved ones in a hospital.
2. The folks experimenting on animals can't be trusted.
Gosh... I wonder which one is most likely?
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 7:41pm):
People like Kyle Szarzynski, who lacks the discipline to do their research and write without thinking, cause a lot of pain to intelligent and hard working people. They damage reputations without regard to the efforts needed to build such reputation. The injured parties have to spend a lot of time repairing the harms. I wish that the pseudo-journalists, such as Szarzynski, would be held to the same standards as Scientists where all we publish has to be peer reviewed and cheaters are not tolerated.
Kyle Szarzynski (February 8, 2008 @ 8:01pm):
Apologies on the name, Dr. Sandgren.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 9:59pm):
Sandgren writes: "PETA IS an issue, if their behavior and agenda render them incompetent to judge UW facilities."
If one's agenda can render them incompetent to judge, then IACUCs cannot judge the appropriateness of animal use in the proposed research protocols that come before them because their agenda is to support animal research.
Anonymous (February 8, 2008 @ 10:15pm):
There is still the matter of torture from Kkyle's original letter.
Simply saying that drilling holes in monkeys' skulls, burning parts of their brains, and then frightening them to study the neurobiology of fear isn't torture doesn't make it so.
Why isn't that torture?
If it's not, is it even possible to torture an animal? Or, because it's done in a lab by a scientist, does this mean it can't be torture? Did Mengele torture people?
Anonymous (February 9, 2008 @ 10:38am):
"1. Society cares more about animals in research than they do about loved ones in a hospital."
It's number 1. Because here's no fanatic PETH group. (H for Humans)
Remember PETA was all upset because the terrorists were using donkeys to carry bombs? No worries about the people killed, just the donkeys.
Remember the thousands of old people who died in Europe (Aug 2003) because everybody else was on vacation.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/08/29/france.heatdeaths/
Anonymous (February 9, 2008 @ 11:40pm):
Re Sandgren's statement that "the current wasn't applied to pig skin"- if not, what WAS it applied to if not the skin of the pig? And why doesn't Sandgren be specific with his claims, eg. what "very relevant information" did the study produce? (and why would "speaking to a scientist" about the results give information any less biased than the so-called value of the study touted by Webster and his fellow experimenters?) And what information "was grossly inaccurate" in the letter that Terri Young wrote to the chancellor? We, the ignorant public, are supposed to just accept the value of all these heinous experiments on defenseless creatures because the experimenters keep stating that they are saving human lives by their actions? Some of us have actually read the full reports of these experiments, and have the ability to understand the implications of what we read...
Anonymous (February 10, 2008 @ 5:37am):
I am surprised that so many people in USA believe in cruelty to animals in laboratories . Good health never comes from such actions.. All medical drugs from vivisection have side effects, some are fatal..
Anonymous (February 10, 2008 @ 11:40am):
Sandgren sounds so smug when stating that the study did not apply the current directly to the pig's skin - which would have been something to be assumed, as that is generally what is done - even if through clothing - to a human...but he fails to clarify that, after cutting open the pig's chest, the current was applied directly to the pig's heart! Trying to extrapolate experimental results from an animal to a human, and calling it "valid research" is questionable enough, but how many humans have been tasered through the open chest directly onto the heart? And could Sandgren please tell us what "relevant information" was obtained from this study? And furthermore, what gives humans the right to carry out these horrible experiments on defenseless creatures, who feel pain and terror just as we humans do!!! but have no way to escape, or to "voice" their despair! And yes, the usual response from these experimenters is that people like me are anthropomorphizing animals - i.e. attributing human emotions to animals. My answer is that anyone who has known and loved an animal companion knows that they have feelings of affection, sadness, fear, pain, etc... Or better still, have you ever watched an undercover video of primates spending their lives in cages, and seen the withdrawn ones huddled in a corner, or tearing at their own flesh as in their madness they go round and round in circles, or seen the terror on a primate's face as it is hauled out of its cage for yet another procedure (and similarly, other animals, pigs, cows, dogs, cats, etc.) Experimenters can't have it both ways - they experiment on primates because they are sentient creatures so like us, then totally discount their feelings as they violate their bodies!!! In these days of advanced technology, there are so many more valid ways to do research without using animals, as many of the scientists at the UW know (including Terri Young). But these huge NIH grants are BIG MONEY for the university - our tax money by the way! It's time the public held these experimenters' feet to the fire, and demands that they stop doing these awful experiments, and concentrate their studies on using non-animal methods, which are usually much more accurate and valid anyway.
Anonymous (February 10, 2008 @ 12:29pm):
"We, the ignorant public, are supposed to just accept the value of all these heinous experiments on defenseless creatures because the experimenters keep stating that they are saving human lives by their actions?"
Why not? We let the US Congress make laws.
Anonymous (February 10, 2008 @ 3:49pm):
Pigs turned out to be a very poor anatomical model. The fat in the chest (combined perhaps with the thick skin) proved too insulating to conduct any significant charge to the heart and immediately surrounding tissues, so Sandgren is correct in his challenge about current being applied to the skin.
But he stopped short of telling the full story. (So much for university academic staff caring about educating the public.)
When the problems with the lack of sufficient conductance arose, Webster surgically placed electrical leads in the tissue near the heart (the distance was specified, but I'm not going to take the time to run it down, since it really only means that pigs are totally inappropriate models of people being tasered.)
And why hasn't one of the "this isn't 'torture' crowd" explained why
keeping monkeys in environmentally and socially deprived conditions, drilling holes in their skulls, burning their brains with acid, and then trying to frighten them isn't torture?
Maybe the answer is similar to the reason that Sandgren dodged the facts of the tasering debacle.
Anonymous (February 10, 2008 @ 6:05pm):
Just do a search! I assume you are a student or faculty at UW with a NetID and password. Try looking in some journals if you want to see the results of the study. A good place to start would probably be IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.
Anonymous (February 11, 2008 @ 12:37pm):
Torture, cruelty, fear...the pigs were under general anesthesia...there was no pain, fear or cruelty. You may disagree with the need or value of the research, but don't infuse the discussion with such charged and irrelevant terms.
Anonymous (February 12, 2008 @ 9:49am):
Anonymous wrote: "Torture, cruelty, fear...the pigs were under general anesthesia...there was no pain, fear or cruelty. You may disagree with the need or value of the research, but don't infuse the discussion with such charged and irrelevant terms."
Sandgren'sr letter was a response to Kyle Szarzynskis column (Animal torture: Another shameful UW institution, Feb. 6). Please try to keep up; read it again if you haven't yet done so. The matter of torture raised in Szarzynski's letter has yet to be addressed. It has been flatly denied, but not addressed.
Why hasn't one of the "this isn't 'torture' crowd" explained why keeping monkeys in environmentally and socially deprived conditions, drilling holes in their skulls, burning their brains with acid, and then trying to frighten them isn't torture?
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