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On Thursday, Oct. 1, the Vassar Animal Rescue Coalition (VARC) hosted a lecture by Dr. Alka Chandna of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The lecture was entitled “Testing, 1, 2, 3: Behind the Scenes of Vassar’s Laboratories.”
In the lecture, Chandna accused three Vassar professors of animal testing abuse, two from the Psychology Department and one from the Biology Department. The fliers that VARC dispersed before the event also named one of the three professors.
In response to these fliers, biochemistry major Hassan Sakhtah ’10 organized for a group of Vassar science students to attend the lecture as well. In the corridor outside of the lecture room, several heated discussions occurred in groups of two and three between the science students and the members of VARC.
“Two years ago,” said Chandna during the lecture, “PETA was contacted by a person working inside [one of] Vassar’s labs. The person informed us of a very disturbing situation: birds becoming sick or injured, overcrowding...birds didn’t get [veterinary] care for sometimes up to a week.”
Examples of suffering among Vassar’s birds included “a quail kept in such a tightly confined area that she had injuries on her back...[and] a zebra finch who had plucked out 20-40 percent of the feathers on her body.”
PETA filed a complaint against Vassar College on Sept. 12, 2007, but Chandna explained that, because Vassar is a private institution, “our [PETA’s] hands were tied. We had to file a complaint with the National Institute of Health,” thus beginning a “paper-chase.”
However, in a Poughkeepsie Journal article on the complaint (“State clears Vassar in bird-research complaint, but PETA presses on,” 9.27.07), stated that “a state investigation…showed that the birds have been cared for adequately.” Chandna pointed out that birds, as well as most other animals commonly used in laboratory research, are not protected under the Animal Welfare Act.
In an interview after the lecture, Sakhtah criticized the lecture, calling it “unprofessional.”
“It’s important to question professors, to know what’s going on,” Sakhtah said. “If VARC wanted to really hold a discussion…with science professors, that would be extremely helpful, but the level of disrespect shown by these people was incredible. You’re going to tell these professors that the research they’re doing is irrelevant, that their studies are useless?”
“We wanted the emphasis [of the event] to be on debate,” wrote VARC in a joint e-mailed statement. “VARC started planning the event this summer after a PETA representative contacted us...we sent out emails to several professors that we knew had used animals in their research to see if they would be interested in potentially debating Dr. Chandna.”
However, some students who attended questioned this motive. “I don’t think it was a discussion,” said Sakhtah after the event. “It was just the speaker trying to push her agenda on students.”
During the lecture, Chandna discussed the fallibility of data drawn from animal tests, citing several examples of drugs being deemed safe for animals but then harmful on humans, and vice versa. She also argued that the stress animals experience due to confinement is always a
“confounding variable” in an experiment.
Chandna discussed alternatives to animal testing, such as various silicon wafers developed at Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at San Diego. These wafers have compartments into which cells from different organs of a human body are injected as well as the appropriate nutrient fluids and test substances.
“This is an example of something cheap [and] fast [that’s] going to give you results of what happens in the human body,” said Chandna. She also mentioned the enormous amounts of information scientists have accumulated and then stored in databases and computers. These, Chandna argued, can be used to run advanced simulations without the use of live tests.
Faculty Research Associate Marianne Porter contested this by pointing out that the information in these databases comes from previous experimentation with animals.
According to Porter, “We are trying to come up with new tools, but we do need that background research.”
Sakhtah also criticized this point of Chandna’s speech in an interview after the lecture. “It’s absurd, because all the data in those bases came from animal models.” He pointed out that Chandna disputes the validity of animal tests, but promotes the use of the databases, whose information was drawn from experiments involving animals.
In their email, VARC wrote, “We hope that the result of this event will be the renewal of an ongoing dialogue about the use of laboratory animals for research and educational purposes, and that the standards for the treatment of those animals will continually be questioned and reevaluated. It is vital that we continue to explore alternatives to animal experimentation for research and educational purposes.”
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