Columbia University Under Fire For Alleged Cruelty

by Maria A. Schulz

One year after a whistle-blowing veterinarian accused Columbia University of cruel and negligent treatment towards baboons and other lab animals, the school’s prestigious medical center still faces allegations of animal cruelty.

Catherine Dell’Orto, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the university at the time she made the allegations, complained to staff at Columbia’s Institute of Comparative Medicine about the treatment of baboons undergoing surgery as part of research into stroke therapies.

The following are among the abuses that Dr. Dell’Orto allegedly witnessed and reported from animal records:
 Baboons whose eyes had been removed for stroke experiments were hunched over in their cages, unable to drink, chew, or lift their heads, and yet were not provided with veterinary care.

 Baboon #6533 was used in a nicotine experiment and lost 40 percent of her body weight but went untreated for a bone infection.

 Dogs in pain were denied analgesics.

 A surgical experiment on pigs had an 80 percent mortality rate, but the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee was not notified.

 Dogs were left overnight after experimental surgery to insert tubes into their chests, and while they were unattended, they chewed the tubes, which caused dangerous air pressure to develop around their lungs.

 Primates were tearing at their own flesh because of stress and a lack of environmental enrichment.
 Deviations from protocols were completely ignored by the head veterinarian.

 Staff were instructed to put outdated drugs in the women’s bathroom to hide them from USDA inspectors.

After complaints to senior medical officials went unheeded, Dell’Orto began to sift through records. It was then that she became convinced that there were systemic problems of maltreatment, poor record-keeping and other violations of rules that regulate the care and treatment of laboratory animals.

In October 2002, she presented her evidence to medical center officials. They ordered an in-house investigation and notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates the use of large animals in laboratories.

Last December, Dell’Orto worried that Columbia’s in-house review would be self-serving, so she contacted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). PETA responded by sending letters to federal investigators and prominent Columbia alumni.

Dell’Orto left the university in February, and is now a practicing veterinarian in Westchester county, just north of New York City. She says she was shunned after speaking up.

"People at Columbia wouldn’t talk to me," she said. "If you express concern, you get blacklisted."

Dr. Harvey Colten, the medical center’s associate dean for research, responded by saying that "Columbia doesn’t claim to be perfect, but we try to be as close as humanly possible...in no way do we find it a problem to have the initial complaint raised. We want people to come forward if they think there are problems."

But on October 21, PETA publicly released what they described as a "disturbing" videotape taken secretly inside Columbia University’s primate laboratories, which backs up Dell’Orto’s story.

"The investigation by Columbia and the USDA has determined that Columbia failed to provide adequate post-surgical care, adequate veterinary care, and euthanasia to animals used in experiments," PETA stated in a press release, "yet no action has been taken against Columbia by the federal government."

"PETA has waited very quietly and patiently for the government to do its job, but it hasn’t," said Mary Beth Sweetland, director of PETA’s Research & Investigations Department. "The USDA has allowed chronic violations of law, because it won’t go up against Columbia. Now it is time for the NIH to step in and do what’s right for the abused primates locked inside Columbia’s labs."

PETA is now reportedly calling upon the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to close Columbia’s animal laboratories for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act and NIH’s own guidelines.

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.