Texas Tech University: Our Public Oversight Committee is...Not Open to the Public
Vivisection laboratories are notoriously secretive. The public's right to know what is happening with our money inside labs is continually eroding. Records that were considered typically public are now frequently denied by labs. The vivisection successfully lobbies frequently for new exemptions to public records laws to state and federal legislative bodies.
So nothing should surprise us about the news that Texas Tech University's Health Science Center is refusing to turn over records related to their animal care and use committee meetings to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In several states, these meetings are open to the public to come in and watch. The committees are required by the federal Animal Welfare Act after an amendment in the 1980s were passed to try and increase public oversight of research activities. In fact, the law requires that one member of the committee be a member of the public not affiliated with the institution.
However, the vivisection community may have found a new loophole to try and conceal their cruelties from the public: an exemption that excludes medical committees from the purview of open meeting/records laws. Such exemptions were likely initially created to allow for the privacy of human patients. The public has a rightful claim to privacy with concern to their medical records and affairs, so the exception makes sense. But, the idea that dogs and cats in abused and killed in vivisection labs have a similar claim to privacy is patently absurd.
PETA has an ongoing campaign against Texas Tech for their decision to use public animal shelters as a source of animals for harmful experimentation. You can read more about PETA's campaign and ways you can help the campaign here and you can view the receipt for when Texas Tech purchased cats from Odessa's City Animal Control here.
This is not the first time that Texas Tech has been the focus of animal rights activists. In July 1989, the Animal Liberation Front broke into Texas Tech and rescued cats that were being harmed by Dr. John Orem. Video was released which showed cats with electrodes protruding from their skulls. An interview with the activists that conducted the rescue can be found here.
Below is an article from Lubbock's Avalanche-Journal about Texas Tech's decision to hide from the sunlight of public scrutiny. Please consider writing letters to the editor and supporting PETA's campaign against Texas Tech. HSC allowed to withhold animal use records By Marlena Hartz | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
Friday, June 26, 2009
The Texas Tech Health Sciences Center can withhold records of a committee that oversees the use of animals in training and research, the Texas Attorney General's Office ruled earlier this month.
An animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and The Avalanche-Journal requested Animal Care and Use Committee documents that may have shed light on the university's decision to buy cats and dogs from a West Texas animal shelter for university training or research.
A Texas Health and Safety Code provision allows medical committees to keep their records and proceedings confidential, reads an explanatory June 15 letter from an assistant attorney general to the university's legal department.
PETA argued the code shouldn't apply to HSC's Animal Care and Use Committee because the panel doesn't deal with human patients.
The code lets the Animal Care and Use Committee, which is made up of HSC employees, freely deliberate, an HSC official said in a May interview with The A-J.
"It's a group of people that have to make a decision and if your comments then are being discussed out on the Internet, say for example, you would be more inhibited as to what you would say and how you would express your opinions. That's just human nature," said Gordon Brackee, a veterinarian and the executive director of the university's Laboratory Animal Research Center.
HSC's communications department declined to comment Thursday on the ruling.
A PETA research associate said the committee documents should be open to the public because the university's work, including its purchase of animals, is funded by taxpayers. The group also hoped the documents would show whether the university had thoroughly sought alternatives to using the shelter animals, a requirement of the Animal Welfare Act.
"What we'd like to know is why a public university would go to such lengths to keep documents about how they treat dogs and cats out of the public view," Research Associate Ian Smith said. "I think the public expects a greater degree of transparency from the institutions they are funding."
The university's legal department challenged PETA's request for committee documents through the attorney general's office.
The HSC does have to release additional veterinary and animal use records to PETA, the office ruled. The A-J has requested those documents, as well, but they have not yet been released to The A-J or PETA, Smith said on Wednesday.
PETA launched a campaign in April against the HSC's use of cats in first responder training.
The university has purchased cats already scheduled for euthanasia from Odessa Animal Control since the 1980s, a shelter spokesperson, Cpl. Sherrie Carruth, told The A-J.
Students training to save babies and small children in emergencies insert breathing tubes and needles into the cats, which are anesthetized during the training and then euthanized, according to HSC officials.
The university also purchased dogs from the shelter up until 2007, Carruth said. Purchasing records for the dogs have been released to The A-J, but they don't show how or why the dogs were used. University officials have either declined to answer A-J questions about the use of the dogs or have said they don't know how the dogs are being used.
The HSC purchased 11 dogs from the shelter in 2006 and 2007, according to records.
"A shelter in many people's minds is a place where animals are cared for and respected. In this situation, animals are being turned into a revenue source (for the shelter)," Smith said.
The university pays $15 apiece for cats, records show. Records The A-J has obtained through the Texas Public Information Act don't show how much the HSC paid for the dogs.
Carruth has said the HSC is the only research institution the shelter officials have sold animals to, and they do so because they believe it advances human health. Original Article
August 18, 2009
Several news updates on our main page recently. Stay tuned for an extensive update coming by the end of this month with more detailed information on many labs and vivisectors.
Friday July 31, 2009
A new and improved photo & video gallery is now on our site. The new gallery features newer photos at higher res, more photos, and the ability for users to submit comments/questions. If you have any photos we don't, we'd love to add them to our collection. If you have any protest pictures, send those in too, as we're currently working on a "protests" photo collection as well to compliment our "vivisection" collection.
Sunday July 26, 2009
New/updated information for vivisectors in several states: CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, HI, TX, TN, SD, SC, RI.
Monday July 20, 2009 Fact vs. Myth section now up. Stay tuned as we debunk more myths on other topics in the coming weeks and months.
Tuesday July 14, 2009
New/updated information for vivisectors in AL, AZ, UT, VA, WA, WI.
Monday July 13, 2009
New essay, "How Like Us Need They Be?," by Rick Bogle, added to the essays section.
Wednesday July 8, 2009
More information added for Emory University, home to Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
Monday July 6, 2009 Two news articles and commentary posted regarding court settlement entered by USDA that states they must post facility reports of vivisection online for public access.
