May 17, 2007
President Hank Brown
Office of the President
University of Colorado
1800 Grant St., Suite 800
Denver, CO 80203-1185
Re: Experimental procedures conducted by Moshe Solomonow
Dear President Brown:
I am writing you to protest the use of cats in experiments conducted
by Moshe Solomonow at the University of Colorado Denver and Health
Sciences Center. Various issues concerning the efficacy of such
experimentation and the use of chloralose as an anesthetic have by
now been brought by others to your attention, as have broader ethical
considerations regarding the use of nonhuman animals for experimental purposes.
To the layman at least, it would seem that the physiological
differences between cats and humans calls into question how
beneficial the experiments of Solomonow, which involve anesthetizing
cats and then mechanically inducing stress to their spinal ligaments,
could be. As a layman myself, however, I recognize that I
cannot appropriately speak to such criticism. That chloralose,
the anesthetic of choice in these experiments, must be carefully
administered with regard to dosage is beyond doubt, and significant
doubt has been raised with regard to appropriate dosages being given
to the cats in this instance. With regard to the broader
ethical considerations involved, significant doubt has been raised in
the minds of many in recent years.
The issues raised by Solomonow's experiments stem from a lab
technician turned whistleblower who believed from personal
observation that the anesthetic chloralose was being administered
improperly, resulting in significant stress and suffering on the part
of the cats involved. The technician contacted the university's
IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) and, believing
the response given to be insufficient, then contacted PETA (People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) with a report of his concerns
and, additionally, with video evidence purporting to support his claims.
With regard this video evidence, Solomonow himself is on record as saying:
"They take pictures of other places and say they're at the
university," while Sarah Ellis, spokeswoman for the University
of Colorado Hospital, has said: "As far as the videotape
they showed, we don't actually know at this point where it came from."
It would appear that the public is being asked to believe that the
evidence against Solomonow has either been manufactured or
manipulated in order to cast him in a negative light.
This charge is belied by the fact that the lab technician in question
went through appropriate channels in order to rectify what he
believed to be inappropriate procedure: he appealed to the
IACUC, and only upon failure of that body to remedy the situation did
he then approach PETA. But no matter: those of us who
advocate for animals are used to being called liars. Indeed, we
are not even surprised by the accusation typified by Solomonow's stated
belief that we are nothing more than "a bunch of lunatics."
Such callowness is to be expected from someone in Solomonow's position;
he stands after all to lose a good deal if the charges against him
prove true. Moreover, we recognize that one who uses nonhuman
animals in invasive experimental procedures must necessarily
objectify those animals, view them as no more than experimental
"tools," and consequently must divorce himself from any
emotional response with regard to the suffering inflicted. I
can only add that there are those of us who believe this process of
detachment itself constitutes a form of "lunacy."
That nonhuman animals should be given much greater consideration than
currently allowed is not a new idea; what is new, however, is the
seriousness with which this ethic is now being treated. Those
of us who subscribe to this ethic believe that humans have no right
to objectify nonhuman animals in the manner typified by Solomonow,
and that we as a society should disallow their use in experimental procedures.
Our concern is partly with the suffering nonhuman animals experience
at our hands and for our benefit – but only partly. Our concern
also pertains to our own species as well. It is our belief
that, in treating nonhuman animals as a type of property which we
may, within certain broad limitations imposed by law, do with as we
wish, we create a mind-set by which they, and all the rest of nature
besides, become no more than a "resource" provided humans
to make our lives safer, more comfortable, and easier to bear.
Such an attitude concerns us in a manner reaching from the suffering
of a single cat to issues as broad as – to use one example currently
much discussed – global warming.
It is out of such concerns that I write this letter of protest.
Regardless of whether chloralose was administered to the cats involved
properly or in appropriate dosage, regardless even of whether or not
the video evidence turned over by the lab technician to PETA
accurately portrays what occurs in Solomonow's laboratory, I protest
the experiments he conducts. I am requesting, therefore, that
you bring those experiments to an immediate halt, as indeed I would
request that any and all experimentation involving nonhuman animals
which occurs at the University of Colorado be brought to an immediate
and permanent ending.
Yours sincerely & etc. . . .
|