Elizabeth Song | When it comes to animal testing, red tape isn't all bad

Sometimes, all it takes to change the world are a few brain-damaged baboons and 26 minutes of video footage. In May 1984, militant activists raided the Penn Head Injury Center and produced a video that shocked the American public and changed federal law.

The video shows a shaved baboon strapped into a metallic helmet. From behind, a pneumatic ram jerks the baboon's head forward to mimic traumatic brain injury; it hits with hundreds of Gs of force. The baboon is about the size of a toddler. Its head snaps forward at 60 degrees. Even worse, the animal is not fully anesthetized. With each hit, the baboon feels pain.

The researchers also smoke during surgery. Sanitation is poor. They joke about "urine asphyxiation" in the labs. In one scene, they crack open an animal's helmet using a hammer and accidentally sever off part of its ear.

The entire video, entitled Unnecessary Fuss, is available online. The whole thing breaks my heart. But it's important to remember that the video is a propaganda piece. It showcases a small segment edited from some 60 hours of recordings.

The abuse, unfortunately, is true. Penn lost an annual $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health after the video aired. In 1985, Rep. George Brown and Sen. Bob Dole passed an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act that enhanced regulatory protections for laboratory animals. It mandated annual inspections of research facilities and created internal committees to ensure compliance.

This brings us to the system we have now: Meet Penn's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. The IACUC uses an elaborate regulatory structure to ensure the welfare of more than 100,000 laboratory animals on campus. According to director Mary Jo Shepherd, balancing the sensitive needs of scientists and research animals can be tricky. "People have said they'd rather kill us and release the animals, which is insane," Shepherd said.

Safety concerns aside, disclosure about animal welfare is a real problem. The IACUC is basically a bureaucratic black box. Meetings and records are off-bounds to the public. Only the Freedom of Information Act allows any public access to inspection reports.

This kind of secrecy has a cost. An ugly internal audit in 2005 cited many of these committees for failure to find alternatives to animal research.

"They tend to rubber stamp," John Pippin, an employee at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said. According to Pippin, most IACUC chairs don't view their roles as regulatory. "They tend to see their function as facilitating the role of the university within the bounds of the Animal Welfare Act," Pippin said.

The lack of public disclosure is distressing. Because IACUCs are internal organizations, they are generally filled by people who agree with the university's position on research. Often, that position is to win lucrative federal grants. Penn's IACUC, for example, is accountable to the vice provost for research.

This set-up might catch the worst fiascos - but it won't do enough to protect many research animals. The committees have been notorious for approving meaningless animal tests or failing to find alternatives.

According to Daniel Kinburn, who also works for the Physicians Committee, one IACUC approved a study on the effects of cocaine in pregnant rats - even though the study had little scientific value. "How would you test a baby rat for learning disabilities or lack of parental love?" Kinburn said.

Even worse, institutional paranoia has obscured public awareness of animal-welfare issues at Penn. The "monkey incident" remains a sensitive topic for administrators. When Jessica Alms tried to set up the Animal Law Clinic at the Law School, she met with underlying resistance. "There are open wounds still," Alms said.

Sadly, activists are some of the few voices pushing for more sunshine in the regulatory realm. More disclosure could ensure that agencies advance the best interests of researchers, staff and animals alike. I'm not asking for the IACUC to publish the locations of labs, divulge private bank-account information or sacrifice first-born sons. But they can - at the very least - make their discussions available to the public and generate an open dialogue with community members.

Silence won't get us anywhere. Public disclosure needs to rem ain an ongoing goal - it could help ensure that old monkey business doesn't come back to haunt us.

Elizabeth Song is a College sophomore from Clemmons, N.C. Her e-mail address is song@dailypennsylvanian.com . Striking a Chord appears on Thursdays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.