The Diary of Michelle Rokke - 3

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In 3335, dog number 3776F was salivating excessively after dosing again. Her mouth gets all red and her ears are soaked with slippery saliva.
In room 949, study 95-3282, the dogs are so afraid and un-socialized they dash to the back of the cage and circle frantically looking for a place to hide. They slink down and when the door is opened they turn frantic circles looking for somewhere to hide.
In 3323, one of the dogs in group two has a cage sore on his foot. I don't think the dogs in this study can see well anymore. The high dosage group, especially, seem to not be fully sure where I'm standing when I'm in front of them. I think they react according to what the other dogs in the room do. They just never seem to look directly at me the way the lower dosage groups do. They look just above or past me when I'm in front of them.
I sent E-mail to Eleanor with a carbon copy to Gene about the exercise cages being pushed up against the dogs' cages in 3327 and 3335. I also informed her the ceiling in 902 is falling down and the plumbing in 910 is faulty.

3/19/97 Wednesday HLS
Eleanor answered my E-mail saying she'd look into it. I noticed the cages were still in 3327 and 3335. The ceiling was fixed in room 902, but 910 still has a plastic bag tied around the plumbing. Gene responded, "Let me know what happens."
The Magainin dogs in study 97-3632 started a l20 hour infusion dose today. The pharmacy was unable to properly mix the group four-dose solution. They used a water-based solution that doesn't mix with the oil-based vehicle the test material is mixed with and it started to separate. As a result, the group four dog was dosed at least an hour later than the others.
Terrence Gittens, the QA auditor, told Brian in the morning he needed to observe dosing and Brian should call him when he's ready to start. Brian had already hooked the first dose bag up when I reminded him about Terrence. Brian phoned him and continued to dose. Terrence arrived and saw one bag of test material being attached to a pump. He groaned when he heard the group four dog wouldn't be ready to dose for another hour or more.
He said if it was after a certain time that afternoon, he wouldn't be there - he would be at the airport. After talking about the possible dose time a little more, he looked at me and said "1 guess I saw enough. That's good enough for me." Then he left.
Irene told me the day before they had trouble with her Magainin rat study 97-3621. She said the group two test materials separated in the syringes. Lisa had asked her why the material was two different colours -clear and milky. She said they panicked because the test material was already being delivered to the rats and they didn't know if they were getting straight test material all at once, or air or what. She said they ended up giving the group two rats group three test material at a slower rate. I asked if that wouldn't really alter the results.
Irene shrugged and said they didn't know. I asked her if the rats getting straight test material in group two after it separated wouldn't really alter the whole study since it's so toxic. She said in the other rat study they didn't start seeing deaths until the recovery period so she didn't know.

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Yao, Lisa, Irene and Rodney were all in the Magainin rat study 3621. One of the group four syringes was occluded. Irene pointed out the test material in the catheters going from the syringe pump to the rat looked like it was separated in the group two rats and some of the others. She said she couldn't tell if it was air or test material. She hoped it wasn't air because that much air in an animal the size of a rat could cause an anabolism.
Gene came by and looked at it and said it looked like the test material had separated from the vehicle, the lipid, again. He said it was separating because it's being delivered at such a slow rate in the group two's. He laughed at Irene's suggestion that if it was air it would kill the rats, saying, "Rats can take a lot."
He said, "For one thing, the lipid and test material need to be mixed with a special machine and it wasn't." I asked why it wasn't. He said we didn't have the machine.
I was in pharmacy getting a vial to put the leftover test material from 3621 in. Brian, Dian - the study director and three of the pharmacy people were there. They were all talking about what I should do with the leftover test material. Someone mentioned just putting it down the drain. Dian said, "Don't tell me! I don't want to know." Brian said, "We often just throw it away." She said again "1 don't want to know." I agreed we had just thrown out the leftover bags of dose material from the last dog study. [Irene told me later they hadn't thrown the entire bags of leftover out, they had returned them to pharmacy because they had to re-use the test material for her study. I saw IV lines with test material in them in the trash after Magainin infusion studies.]
The pharmacy techs and Brian talked about what could get incinerated and what couldn't. Brian mentioned an Acea material that was floating over Pennsylvania even as we spoke, and everyone groaned and laughed nervously. Dian said again, "I don't want to know! Don't you guys get it? If I don't know I can just plead ignorance, but if I know, I have to tell you not to do it. So don't tell me!"
This thought process of 'what [people] don't know...' is commonplace at Huntingdon, and in fact seems to be the only thing that keeps the lab in operation. I have seen many of the people I work with at the lab routinely alter 'little' bits of information, intentionally leave information out when documenting or relating data, intentionally create vague responses to problems and anticipated problems, routinely write memos to add to study files explaining why the rules weren't followed.
This is extremely common and because they have all the rules spelled out in SOP's everything always looks 'ship-shape' on paper and when queried. You have to know what, specifically, to ask for to discover all the inaccuracies - and one almost always leads to another.
Lisa told me she had filed a grievance with the IACUC about study 3318 when it was going on, she was the primary tech. She said the test material was supposed to increase red blood cells and it did. She said the vehicle was human blood serum but it was more pure than anything they had used before and a lot of the dogs had allergic reactions to it. She said there were so many dogs getting so sick from the test material that they were throwing up blood and [urinating] and [defecating] blood.
The dogs were going into anaphylactic shock after having allergic reactions to it. She said we had to stay late all the time, like 'til seven at night because there were dogs in comas from dosing at ten in the morning. She said Irene and Al?? had moved one dog into critical care because he was so sick from the test material. She said she notified IACUC and they called the sponsor, who said they expected allergic reactions to it and it was okay to administer an antihistamine after dosing to the dogs that needed it. She said she was really mad because the sponsor knew about it but wouldn't say anything.

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She was complaining about all of the dogs in her bone study being so sick. I asked if Terry couldn't keep the test from going on. She said she didn't think so.
Lisa and I walked past room 902, study 3335, in the middle of the afternoon. I pointed out the double exercise cage pushed tightly against other cages with dogs in them, depriving the dogs of light, sight and air. Lisa and I went in and moved the cages to the centre of the room where they still deprive several dogs of a view other than a steel wall a foot away but at least they get a little light and some air.

3/20/97 Thursday HLS
Cleaned DSI dogs. The surgeries were done more than two weeks ago, and there still has been no data collected from the implants. Irene told me Al has not had any time to set them up. Last week Al and Irene had told me the DSI system wasn't really working, AL was having trouble getting it set up. Each of the wires going from the DSI receiver to the computer box cost $500. So far the dogs have chewed up three that I know about.
The dog's implants look better. The swelling around the implants have gone down. Because of the implants the dogs are not allowed to exercise together, or at all. There is a single extra cage in the room below one of the dogs. Irene told me I could put the dogs in that cage when I cleaned if I wanted to. Otherwise I could just leave them in their own cage while I cleaned. I think that's what everyone else does.
The dogs are so starved for attention and exercise they literally throw themselves out of their cages at me when I open the cage door. Cleaned 3623 (Magainin) dogs. The puppies are very isolated. So much of their little bodies are covered with dosing paraphernalia there's hardly a spot for me to pet them. I usually try to rub their faces arid slide my fingers under the tight collars to rub the skin on their necks. They press forward when the door is opened and have to be pushed in.
Gene told me in the UK dogs in infusion studies wear jackets and vests with pockets in them to hold the pumps and the dose material. He said everything has to be right on the dog so they aren't attached to a tether. The dosing bags are smaller because of it and have to be changed frequently - round the clock if it's a continual 24-hour dose. He said it's because of stricter animal rights laws, tethers aren't allowed because they impinge the dog's freedom.
Helped Brian dose his dogs.
Helped Irene and Yao dose rats in 3621.
Brian, Irene and I bled dogs in 3623. When Irene and I tried to bleed dog number 2750 she struggled so much I couldn't begin to hold her still. She yelped and cried whenever the needle got close to her neck. Irene had Brian hold the puppy down when he came in and she tried to bleed her. The dog W3S so afraid she urinated before Irene got enough blood.
Brian's shirt was soaked with urine and he was furious. He picked the dog up by the skin on her back and by the collar and threw her roughly down oil the sling cart. He tied her into the sling, pulling the ropes around her legs extremely taut in his anger. He obtained the blood sample from her leg cursing at her the whole time. A tour came by and peered in the window at Brian as he bled the dog. Irene tried to tell him but he just ignored her.

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I cleaned and fed 3282. Most of these dogs (who are from Harlan/Ridglan and will be used in the bone breaking study) have to be dragged forward by the scruff of their neck to be put into the exercise cage. Even the few who come to the front of the cage slink back when I reach for them. They dig their feet into the cage grate and stiffen their legs. Terry told John, who works in cage washing and large animals to go in and pet the dogs in this study everyday for an hour (every day he works). They're so fearful and un-socialized it's doubtful any amount of petting will help them at this point.
Gene, Terry, and Lisa are all very upset about the condition of the dogs in 3282. Terry tried to refuse the shipment when they first came in but they were accepted anyway. They have a lot of health problems, are all different sizes and ages and are completely un-socialized. Everyone is very upset about having to work with these dogs.

3/22/97 Saturday HLS
Yao and I medicated the dogs in 3282. It took a full hour to fulfil the 17 or more vet requests. Most of the dogs were treated for otitis, conjunctivitis, and abscesses on their feet. Yao followed up on conditions noted previously, however, he didn't notice any additional health conditions. When lobbed in the afternoon I found an additional four dogs (?) with lacrimation (conjunctivitis) and one dog whose cage was full of blood from a large sore on the bottom of her foot.
I filled out a vet request for her and asked Terry, who normally is not in on the weekends, to look at the dog. She told me "These dogs are crap dogs. Rejects." She told me "[she] had told Cathy Kelly, the study director they shouldn't be put on study." Terry told her "They are not healthy dogs and should not be used and if they were used it would be a poor quality study." Terry said, "You know what's going to happen if you take a dog with foot sores and wrap it up in a splint? That tissue's going to get all black and stinky and it's going to get worse and never heal."
She said "Cathy is going to get half-way through the study and realize it and regret it." She said, "Cathy Kelly told me 'They're dogs! They're going to have problems. What do you expect?" Terry examined the dog and told me it was a weird dog with feet like a duck - they were webbed. Where the pads on her feet were supposed to be individual pads separated by skin they were all joined together. She started randomly grabbing dogs as she told me this [and I mean grabbing - just flinging open doors and roughly dragging them out] saying, "Is this normal? What are your feet like?"
She tried to grab one extremely shy, fearful dog next to the one I had written up. I was shocked to see the veterinarian just grab whatever dog part she could get a hold of and pull, dragging the frightened dog to the front of the cage. Finally, she had a sloppy hold on each of the dog's upper legs and started pulling. These dogs are so withdrawn they don't just give in and let themselves be dragged. They freak out and try to resist by digging in their feet and trying to twist away. She had a very tight hold on the dog's legs and was determined to get her forward.
I was surprised when the dog didn't get hurt with this rough handling. The fifth dog she checked is extremely submissive and stayed frozen at the front of her cage when Terry opened the door. Terry looked at me with big eyes and said, "Look! A dog that doesn't run away. At one point she said all the dogs feet look like that. Then she said again "These are reject dogs."
She wrote on the vet request "The dog's pads are keratinized..." She wrote a treatment plan to soak the dog's foot in betadine. I asked her about the additional dogs I'd found with lacrimation. She told me to treat them just like the others [with conjunctivitis] and she'd sign the papers later. (I didn't treat them today because I felt she should sign the vet requests first).

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There were not enough forms in the ob book to write up additional vet requests but I made some up on Sunday.
I asked her if we should be exercising the dogs in separate cages when we clean so they didn't transmit conjunctivitis to other dogs but she said it was fine to double them up. There are two other dogs with open sores on the bottom of their feet. The sores were not noticeable until I picked them up for cleaning.
The draft protocol only calls for butorphonal to be administered once after surgery. There is the standard guideline about administering analgesics as needed but I've never seen this done when animals are in distress as a result of test material or procedures.
Yao called the study director Dian Blaset to tell her rat number 1503 in study 3621 has a giant seroma (the test material was collecting under the rat's muscle layer in her inner thigh and abdomen area instead of going through the catheter right into the femoral vein). The seroma was about the size of a golf ball. Dian told him to repair the site surgically using the other side of the rat to implant the catheter. Yao told me the rat had obviously not been getting the test material for more than 25 hours, evident by the size of the swelling.
He said he had obbed the rats the day before and in the morning and had not noticed it. He explained to me the protocol only calls for observations from outside the cage and this is not noticeable from outside the cage without taking each rat out and looking at them. He said he was able to do repair surgery on the rat but he couldn't because he isn't certified. Al, Irene or Brian would have to come in to do it.
Then he said Irene and Brian always get help with everything they do. They always have Al come over and assist them. He said he, himself, doesn't say he can do something unless he can and then he doesn't ask for help. Yao asked Terry about the rat and she said it's an infusion study and the rat has obviously been off infusion for a long time and to repeat the surgery now and continue the infusion would be futile. She drained about 5 mls of test material from the rat's seratoma and it still looked large. Yao was taking the rat from the cage when he first noticed the 1190 and 1264 particularly have very long, overgrown nails that are curling around into their pads.
The group seven dog in the Ritalin study 3335, still salivates and foams at the mouth for several hours after test material administration. She lies down and throws her head around. James was all hunched over near the feeder hole when I went in to see him. He reached out for me right away when I knelt in front of him, then he quickly hunched over again. I don't know if he's sick and is uncomfortable in any other position or if he's just miserable. He let me rub his back and stroke his head for a while but he wouldn't take the treat I offered him.

3/23/97 Sunday HLS
James was all curled up in a foetal position as usual and he flashed me his submissive grin when I first went in - then he looked thoughtfully at me. He let me stroke his head and he stretched his shoulders back so I could rub his tummy and chest. I stroked his cheek and he tipped his head back and smiled just a little. When I got up to leave he resumed his foetal position and tucked his head down low.

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I helped Stephanie prepare NO dosing tubes for 3314. She said the ones they're using were getting all yellow and gross looking. I asked her how long they can be used. She told me they should really be replaced every two weeks but she lets it go longer than that.
Stephanie has said this exact thing to me about cage changes, as have many other people. They know it's supposed to be done every two weeks but they often let it go longer.

3/26/97 Wednesday HLS
Today I cleaned room 953, the room holding the five dogs used in DSI validation surgeries. When I signed for cleaning I saw no one had signed for feeding the dogs on Monday, 3/24/97. On the schedule for Monday, Rodney was supposed to feed them. Because they are often remembered only at the last minute, it doesn't surprise me no one fed them on Monday. The computer system still hasn't been set up to gather data and because they aren't on study they're often forgotten.
The dogs in this study are so lonely and starved for attention. 1190 just can't get enough snuggling and 1272 is the same way. They are torn between running all over the room when I let them out of their cages and just being held and loved. 1367 desperately wants to explore the room when he's out, he's always racing from one smell to another. The female dogs, 1264 and 1255, are not sure what they're supposed to do but when I hold them they press their noses into my neck.
The femoral catheter dogs in 3623 were taken off dose. The group three dog is sick from the dose material, "slightly dehydrated", her cage is full of diarrhoea. The group three and four dog are still being infused with saline.
Terry came in room 949 while I was cleaning to examine a dog she had "Like the 39th vet request for ..." when someone came in to tell her the USDA inspector was there. He showed her the inspector's card and told her she was waiting in QA. She kept saying "Now? Right now??" Lisa and Rodney were taking x-rays of the dogs in room 950, study 3282. Terry told them they couldn't do more than a couple at a time because the USDA inspector was there and someone had to be with the dogs as they recovered from the anaesthetic. Lisa was sitting in front of what she called "CCU", a stainless steel cage on wheels. When I went in after cleaning there were three sedated dogs from 3282 in it.
I saw Rodney come in to get dog number 8211, she is extremely fearful arid always hides face first in the back corner of her cage when the door is opened. I usually have to stand on the rack of the cage below so I'm able to reach her scruff to drag her forward. When Rodney grabbed her he grabbed a handful of skin on her side and dragged her forward sideways, even lifting her out of the cage by the skin on her side. He's no taller than I am and it looked like whatever he could reach he grabbed.
I watched Al bleed rats again in 3621. The rats are off infusion and the catheters have been tied off. Irene showed me rat 1503, the rat with the big seroma. She said the catheter has come through the skin and is all infected leaving a big open wound at the femoral site. She said yesterday it was the loop of the catheter that was showing and the wound was surrounded by black necrotic tissue - but it was sort of starting to heal over.

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She said when they looked at it today, the rat had chewed off all the dead tissue and the plastic tubing was hanging out even more. Irene wanted to put a staple in it to close it but Terry told her because it's an old wound and not a fresh wound it wouldn't be a good idea - she said as long as it's open and draining it's fine.
I picked the rat up later in the day and saw she had a one to one and a half inch open wound (the whole length of the surgery site) open down to past the muscle layer. It's raw and bloody looking with pus apparent way down in the opening. A piece of plastic tubing is visible with a couple of inches hanging out of the wound.
A few hours after the bloods were done I noticed rat 4001's right eye was protruding from her head and was so blood-filled and scabbed over it looked black. The area is swollen and the eye is about twice the size of his other eye. He sits at the back of his cage with his head tipped to the side, leaning his sore eye into the side of the cage.
Irene told me "That happens sometimes, quite often actually, but usually not when Al does it." She said because rats' eyes protrude, they dry out quickly. She said the rat's eye would dry up and fall out soon and we'd probably see it lying on the floor. She said sometimes if you put lubricant on it right away sometimes it helps. Lisa came in and saw the eye and said, "That's really gross!" Irene told AI, who looked at it and said, "It's because whoever held it off didn't do it right." After he left the room, Irene said, "Al always finds a way to blame someone else when something happens." Yao and Irene had held the rat's eyes off after Al bled them.
The USDA inspector found a lot of problems with 3282. Terry showed her the vet requests and explained technicians write requests and notify her to come and look at them. When the inspector left the room, Terry gleefully hit Lisa on the arm and said, "We're covered! She's really upset about the condition of the dogs and we're going to get written up for it but we've been treating them so it's ok.
he company's going to look bad though - really, really bad." Terry talked about dog number 8216 being so neurotic she was like she was in New Brunswick at 1:00 AM - scared all the time. She said her heart raced all the time whenever she saw people and was scared 24 hours a day! She said the best thing for her would be euthanasia. I asked if she couldn't authorize that because she's the veterinarian and on the IACUC. She said she couldn't. The best she could do would be to eliminate her from study, which she hoped, would happen but it depended on the x-rays.
Lisa had moved the CCU into the surgery suite and when Terry saw it she said it was a. good idea to have it in there as long as the inspector was there.
Terry said the inspector wasn't happy about the x-ray machine being in the surgery suite (where it's always kept.) Rodney answered the inspector's questions about cleaning schedules and asked him about the x-ray machine. Rodney told her we had cleaning logs and after she left he said laughingly, a couple of times, "She doesn't know we ALWAYS keep the x-ray machine in the surgery suite - she thought it was just in here today."
Rodney and Lisa told me they had told Terry the first dog they had x-rayed had been given an injection of Xylazine and Acepromezine. The dog had a very bad reaction to it so they anaesthetised the rest of the dogs with Ketamine and Acepromezine. Rodney said he knew an approximate dosage of the ace/ketamine mix - 1 CC per k, but they didn't have dosage calculations for it. They had dosage calc figured out for the xylazine/ace mixture but not ketamine/ace. Rodney asked Terry what to do about it when the inspector was across the hall. Terry said, "That's ok, can't you just quick write it out?"

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Rodney said again he didn't know the exact dosage, just what usually worked for him as a ballpark. Terry told him "Just put the Ketamine/ Ace in your pocket and if the [USDA] inspector asks just tell her you're using xylazine/ace and show her the calc you have." Rodney nodded knowingly and said he'd wondered if he should do that as he placed the bottle of Ketamine/ Ace in his breast pocket.
Terry left the room but turned and came right back saying to Rodney and Lisa "Just remember when you falsify data use the same colour ink!" Everyone laughed and nodded. Later, the inspector came in and when she walked through surgery she looked at the calc sheet and the bottles of drugs on the table. Rodney stood next to her with the bottle of drugs they were really using hidden in his pocket.
The USDA inspector found a primate with alopecia in P&G study 3221. Terry couldn't find where she had recorded it during monthly physicals but she knew she'd seen it and recorded it. She flipped wildly through the obs book that goes back to July but couldn't find the observation noted. She even found Kevin in the cafeteria and asked him about it. Terry was so anxious to find the data, Kevin said she spread the ob book out on the salad bar for him to help her look.
He groaned about her even bringing the contaminated book into the cafeteria let alone laying it on the salad bar. The inspector said the primate needed more enrichment because she was self-mutilating out of boredom.
The inspector didn't like the way Lisa had her tracking records on the clipboards in the two rooms for 3282. Apparently they're the same in both rooms and not separated by which dogs are located in which room.
Lisa told me they'd come in to get the study file for 3282. I asked if she had a protocol for it yet. She said there is only a draft protocol. I asked if there was a signed protocol for 3282. She said no not yet. I said we shouldn't even have those dogs yet and she nodded. I asked if they would see that (the inspector when she looked at the study file.) I said so they'll find out right, and she shrugged saying "we aren't even supposed to keep the protocols in the study file, they just do because it's easier". She said her study file was almost all empty anyway. Terry told me again, she tried to refuse the shipment of dogs when they first arrived but Cathy Kelly said no.
The dogs in study 3337 were killed yesterday and today. The hall was filled with the smell of formaldehyde. I saw James - from necropsy, take a live puppy into the necropsy room where four tables were being used. He plopped the dog on a table right across from another table where a woman was using a big power saw to cut up the head of a mutilated dead beagle. Behind James, another man shoved the bloody remains of another puppy into a garbage bag. I think they should euphonise the dogs in a quiet room away from the sight of already mutilated dogs. Study 3335 is being killed tomorrow.
Rodney said as we walked by necropsy "I wonder what the construction workers think when they're here? What do they think of us and what we do? They must wonder what kind of people work here. I shrugged and said they probably didn't think about it. He said he knows it's best never to tell anyone what you do for a living. Never go into details.

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He said at his other job at the hospital, doing dog surgery research, when the inspectors came they pointed things out to them in an effort to get improvements. He said one inspector was a real jerk and cited him for haying a dog in too small of a cage. He said he better get rid of that animal, he didn't want to see him when he came back in four days. Rodney said he asked what he should do - he'd rather have him kill the dog or starve it just because of the cage. The inspector had said I don't care what you do with it just get rid of it in four days. I asked Rodney what he'd done and he said he really couldn't remember, he thought they'd found him another cage.
He said they only had one room because it was academia and the inspector always cited them for having multiple species in one room but couldn't ever come up with a reason. Why not, because no diseases are transmittable.
Rodney told me while he worked at his other job, he sent his girlfriend a set of dog's eyes with a note that said "I only have eyes for YOU." Then he told me he later sent her a dog's heart with a note that said "My heart belongs to you."

3 /27/96 Thursday HLS
In study 3621 rat number 4001's eye really looks bad and no vet request has been written. Rat number 1503 chewed the rest of the catheter tube out.
Irene, Yao and I collected dog bloods in 3623. One dog was acting squirmy when Yao was holding the site off after collection and Yao slapped her in the head. Irene tied the catheters off, cutting and knotting them before she forced them back into the partially healed incision site on their backs.
I saw Kevin training Dilip to draw blood on a puppy from 3335. Dilip had to slide the needle in and out of the dog's neck several times before finally getting the blood sample. I watched a necropsy from the window. A puppy from 3335 was completely cut open from neck to groin, his ribcage exposed. I saw the dog throw his head back and howl. I thought it was just a final muscle convulsion after euthanasia, but then I saw the dog throw his head back writhing from side to side still vocalizing. The last writhing head throw happened when the person doing the necropsy sliced through the dog's leg muscles.
Irene told me they used to give the monkeys Ketaset and then slice them open all across their chest and neck to find the vein so they could exsanguinate them. She said they had to start giving them something else because basically the monkeys were awake they were just completely paralysed - they knew what was going on they just couldn't move.
Irene forgot to feed the DSI dogs until 2:30.
Irene told Brian about the USDA inspection and told him we got slammed on a lot of animal welfare stuff.
Lisa showed me the vet physical list from 3282. She said usually there are maybe one or two that have problems, her study had almost half of the dogs listed.

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The DSI dogs are completely lonely and isolated. They've been warehoused with the implants and no exercise for weeks.
James was very sad today when I went in to see him. He barely looked up from his foetal position.
Cardio had practice rat surgeries today. Brian went to the table where Irene was implanting a femoral catheter in a rat. He picked up a scissor in one hand and one of the rat's legs in the other and said, "I think I'll cut his foot off." He started to close the scissors when Irene screamed, "Brian! Don't you dare!" Brian laughed and said, "You know I'd do it." He didn't drop the rat's leg.
Irene said, "I worry about you having children." Brian looked puzzled and asked her why. Irene said again she really worried about him having children and said she hears about people like him all the time. After that Brian dropped the rat's leg and walked away saying "It's just a rat. No matter what PETA wants us to think, it's just a rat. It's not a dog or a goat or a boy..." [Check video for verbatim - sound only - -no picture].
At came in to check on the surgeries and saw Brian cutting his rat's heart out. Brian always cuts the rats wide open when he's done practicing and digs around until he finds the heart. He cuts it out and puts it the operating table several inches away from the rat. The heart continues to beat for several minutes as Brian pokes and prods and it and the rat. If anyone rolls their eyes or says anything about it Brian always says very prou91y, "I'll never have nightmares about putting a still-alive rat in the freezer.
I know they're dead when I get done with them - this is the only way to really be sure." Al gave Brian a half- hearted admonishment and I said at least the rat still has four feet to alert Al, who is higher up than Brian, about what Brian had intended to do earlier. Brian said "Oh! That's right! I was going to cut his foot off." He picked up a scissors in one hand and the rat's foot in the other and just before he could close the scissor Al said "Brian!!" and stopped him. Brian giggled like a bad schoolboy caught chewing gum. Nothing else was ever said about it.
Irene took the extras from her rat study 3621 for practice. One of the rats that had been anaesthetised with isoflurane already had two catheters in and couldn't be used for practice. Irene told Rodney to kill her. Rodney wrapped the rat in a paper towel saying he didn't like to look and put her in a plastic bag. Then he pulled her head one way and her body the other.
He didn't spend more than a few seconds pulling at her. As he put the bag down I asked if he knew if she was dead - how did he know for sure. He nodded knowingly and said, "She's dead." About twenty minutes later I saw the rat trying clumsily to crawl out of the plastic bag. I screamed for Rodney to come and look at the rat he had killed - she was still alive. He left the rat he was operating on open on the table and as he walked across the room said, "No, she can't be."
Putting her back in the plastic bag he grabbed her head in one hand and one leg in the other and pulled and twisted. Then he put some isoflurane on a paper towel and dropped it in the bag before tying it shut. Again, he didn't look for any vital signs before putting the rat down and assuming she was dead.
As Yao was preparing to start surgery on his rat, the rat pulled his head from the anaesthetic mask and started struggling on the table. It took several minutes of holding the rat's head in the mask for him to become anaesthetised. When I had prepped Brian's rat, I gave it to him and told him to wait a few minutes before starting because the rat was light after being carried from the prep area. Brian immediately taped the rat's legs to the table and cut into him. The rat didn't move but I saw his respiration increase dramatically - a well-known and reliable indicator of pain.

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Rodney left the OR to use the bathroom. He had a rat cut wide open and still alive on the table. About ten minutes later, Irene asked where he'd gone and when he was coming back. Someone else finally killed the rat and Rodney drifted back into the OR more than twenty minutes later.
One of the extra rats brought over for practice surgeries had a deformed, discoloured eye. It may have been caused from improper bleeding. New techs use extra rats for practicing procedures. That rat was still left at the end of the day and was taken back to the extra colony to suffer for an indefinite period of time.

3/29/97 Saturday HLS
Rat number 4001 in study 3621 does not look well. His eye is still all bloody and scabbed over. The open wound on his back where the end of the tied-off catheter still protrudes looks infected. It's very raw looking and I can see green thick material down in the opening. He is not very active, spending most of his time sitting at the back of his small cage. His coat looks very dirty like he's stopped grooming himself. No one has filled out a vet request for him - it looks like he'll just suffer with the pain until the study is finally over next week.
Rat number 4503 still has an open wound on her inner thigh. It looks like it's starting to close up but it still looks swollen.
The DSI dogs were so hyper and needy today. I don't think anyone's given them any attention since I cleaned the room on Thursday morning. 1190M and 1272M are so loving. As always they're torn between running the length of the room and snuggling. Today when I opened their cage doors they literally threw themselves at me and didn't want to be put on the floor to run.
I spent several minutes rubbing their tummies and nuzzling their faces before they felt happy enough to scamper around. 1190 always has such a worried look on his face. 1272 spends a lot of time sitting on his haunches and he still keeps the weight off his left hind leg. I think his sciatic nerve may have been injured during the surgery. Rodney told me that happens sometimes.
Dog number 1367M loves to run but once I put him back in his cage he does everything he can to keep me from closing the door. He tries jumping out at me, sticking his head and feet out of the door and finally grabbing at my hands with his mouth as I push him back in so I can shut the door. He's so frantic about grabbing my hands it breaks my heart. The little females, 1255 and 1264, are very loving and always press their noses into my neck. They're both very small and thin, the DSI implants sewn under their skin look like big horrible tumours. Even when they're running and playing and being hugged the few minutes I'm with them, none of these dogs ever truly look happy. They always have a worried look in their eyes.
The five puppies in study 3623 are all in the recovery phase and are out of the jackets and tethers. Today I hugged and talked softly to dog number 3750 for a long time and she wouldn't even wag her tail. She hung limply in my arms as if it was too late to try and comfort her.
In study 3282, the dogs are still very fearful. There are a few who don't cower in the corner of their cage after the door is opened. These dogs act just crazy. It's like they have no idea how to act. They've bought into the idea they don't have to be so afraid but now they don't know how to act. They circle and jump and bob wildly all around the cage. When I reach for them they go nuts - flailing wildly as they try to evade my grasp.

---

When I finally get a hold of them, they freeze and dig their feet into the floor grate, as if they suddenly remember they have reason to be afraid. The dogs are so stiff, the heavy cage grate is pulled out of the cage with them. Dog number 8181F had vomited mostly red bile. I saw in the ob book this is the third day there's been blood pooled in the bottom of her cage. On Thursday it was attributed to faeces and on Friday it was marked under vomit.
Todd, a new associate tech hired by Delta to do temporary work unloading the archive trailer, told me the company has to archive everything it produces. They have material from the sixties down in the basement and even if they go under they have to hire someone to work in the archives. He said its FDA. He said Huntingdon's started calling companies and telling them they have to start paying for storage if they want Huntingdon to keep the data.
Todd said of course they can't do that legally but they're hoping the companies will say go ahead and get rid of it. Todd said he learned all about the archives the week he worked down there. He said that's really all they did while they hauled boxes was talk to Henry about it.
I heard George and Rachel talking about a monkey who'd gotten his arm stuck. It was swollen but George got it free. Rachel was telling him he had to record it. She said it was ok this time but he really should record it.
I went in to see James about 2:30. It was less than an hour since dosing and he was still all freaked out. He was sitting tensely on the perch of his cage when I went in and he grinned submissively and scampered back when I approached. He came to the front of his cage when I knelt in front of it and stared out into the room. He let me stroke his leg for a while but while I was petting his tummy one of the neighbouring monkeys started shaking his cage violently, screaming and banging at the bars. All the noise startled James and he tucked down into his foetal position. He didn't look at me at all today the few minutes I was with him.

3/30/97 Sunday HLS
Rat number 4001 in study 3621 is a mess. His eyeball is completely dried out. His cage, face and feet are covered with blood. The area around the mutilated eye is inflamed and looks infected. His catheter site looks infected and full of purulent material. It looks like the centre of the eyeball itself is starting to cave in - or maybe it's not as swollen as the rest of the eye socket.
I asked Brian if we should fill out a vet request for the rat with the eye problem. Brian said "What rat? I was just in there obbing and I didn't see anything." Then he laughed. I reminded him about the rat, whom Irene and I had told Brian about on Thursday. He asked what group it was in. I told him he was in group four.
Brian said he wasn't surprised he didn't see it then because group four is on the bottom row. He said, "She [Irene] has the whole rack and she has to put all of them on one side all the way down. She should use the first two rows on both sides to make it easier to see them - for me anyway. Maybe the rest of you can see them but I can't." [Check video for verbatim quote] Brian is very obese and is unable to perform any animal care tasks which require him to bend down low. When he bleeds monkeys he only bleeds those in the top row of cages and makes everyone else do the monkeys in the lower cages.
We went to look at the rat and Brian agreed it didn't look good but he didn't think we should do anything. He said we should leave it and make Irene deal with it tomorrow.

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I told him we could at least fill the vet request out and have it ready for Terry, she probably wouldn't look at it until tomorrow anyway. He said he didn't really know that much about rats and he would check with the rodent tox people and see what they usually do. He said he didn't know if they usually write up things like this.
I obbed the DSI dogs. Dog number 1367 threw up yellow bile while I was in the room. The Magainin dogs in 3623 are very lonely.
I helped Brian do vet treatments in 3282. He obbed the rooms first. In 950, he wheeled the cart of medicine in and filled out the ob book. He saw I had marked 8207 as having unformed stool yesterday - I checked her cage and told him it was normal today. He checked WNL for all the dogs without even walking the length of the room. He did not look in any of the cages before he checked WNL.
He made several remarks about not treating any of the dogs with vet requests in 3282, saying they didn't need it. I was in the room and he had me help him treat the dogs. Brian told me the Colgate dogs that were used in the gingival study were as bad or worse than the dogs in 3282. He said they never got any better and all the petting in the world wouldn't make a difference with the bone dogs. He said the gingival dogs were transferred to the extra colony, the Colgate extra colony and not sacrificed at the end of the study because they didn't know if they wanted to use them in another study. He said they were sacrificed after being in the extra colony for a long time.
Brian told me he doesn't like the way Gene preps dogs for surgery. He doesn't like that he cuts open their skin before putting the abo-cath in. He doesn't think it's right, it's not SOP, and he said it can't be very comfortable for the dogs - "...it's got to hurt like hell when he does that." Brian also said he doesn't think it's good that Gene takes the abo-cath out right away instead of taping it in.
I went in to see James today. He was clinging to the front of his cage and flashed me his submissive grin before focusing in on me. He tucked his head down and let me rub his back. He stretched his head back so I could rub his chest. I told him he was too far away from me and I couldn't reach him. He got up and walked to the back of the cage. When he came back he settled in as close to the cage door as he could get.
I rubbed his arms, legs and chest for a few more minutes. James tipped his head back with his mouth open slightly as he stared vacantly at the top of the cage. The distant expression on his face makes me think it's becoming harder for him to know kindness for a few brief minutes than to never know it at all.
I went to F-wing to see the rabbits. In room 550, there are rabbits with collars and shaved patches. It's a U-10 study, Union Carbide study. In 952, the rabbits are not on test, in 954 there are two different studies going on for Union Carbide. A couple of the rabbits had scabs in the shaved area where the test material had been. In room 956, the rabbits are not on test yet. The study file for 3282 has two forms authorizing animal orders for the study. One is dated 1/27/97 for 34 animals. Another is dated 2/12&14/97 for six animals. They are both signed by about four people including the study director Cathy Kelly.

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The purchase invoice lists Harlan International in Indianapolis, Indiana as the supplier. The tracking forms and canine histories list Ridglan Farms in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin as the breeder. The DSI husbandry record has a notation written across March 24th noting nothing was documented for animals fed due to an oversight. On the schedule Rodney was responsible for feeding them but nothing was documented for the 24th. On Wednesday and Thursday I asked Irene, Brian and Yao if they knew if anyone had fed them. They all shrugged and said they were sure they were fed and it just wasn't documented.
Mike, the security guard from Pinkerton told me he had noticed the thermometer in one of the rooms for 3314 has been broken for two weeks. He said they have to record the temperatures of the rooms on their rounds and he saw the thermometer had a double red line. He said that
it's obviously broken and anyone who looked at it could see that. He said one day he went into the tech room and told some of the people who were in there. He told me Dilip told him not to worry about it. Mike told me when he pursued it, telling Dilip they could all get in a lot of trouble and the study could be compromised because of it, Dilip cut him off and told him rudely not to worry about it. He said Dilip went on to say he didn't even know if there were any thermometers to replace the broken one. Mike said even after he told the technicians in the room about it, Dilip being the only one who would respond to him, the same broken thermometer remained in the room. He said every day it reads the same.

4/1/97 Tuesday HLS
I went in to pick up my check and asked Irene and Yao if the rat's eye in 3621 had fallen out. Irene said not yet. Yao said right away "Rat number 4001 ", everyone knows what rat it is and no one is doing anything for him. I asked if a vet request had been put in. Irene said no and that she hadn't even been recording it and shrugged. She said they never even record eye injuries from bleeding because they happen all the time and the rats live. I asked Irene the day I discovered if the rat shouldn't be euthanased and I asked Brian on Sunday if we shouldn't euthanase him. They both said no like it was a strange thing to ask about.
Eleanor was talking to Irene and Rodney about an Eisai study that large animals has coming up where 48 dogs will be IV dosed a large amount of test material over several minutes each day. Because of the dosing requirements the dogs will be tied into slings for dosing.

4/2/97 Wednesday HLS
Rat number 4001M's eye looks horrible. It's starting to dry out and cave in. The whole thing looks like it's starting to get infected.

4/3/97 Thursday HLS
Lisa and some of the other cardio people were in the tech room at our desks. Brian was making my schedule for the weekend and asked me how long I needed to clean some of the dog rooms. I told him I needed at least 45 minutes for the puppy room, 3627, and at least an hour for each room in 3282, the bone dogs. He laughed and said, "What do you do in there?? Why does it take you so long??"
I told him I followed SOP, that I use unicide, I check the water valves after AND I TAKE THE DOGS OUT OF THE CAGES!!" He and Lisa both laughed. Brian said "Well, I take the dogs out of the cages sometimes."

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I gave him a disbelieving look and he said "Well... it's OK if they get a little wet. They like it. It's good for them to have a bath once in a while..."

4/5/97 Saturday HLS
On or about this date, Lisa left me a note about counting digits and telling me not to write up sores on the dogs' faces. "Don't write up sores on face."

4/6/97 Sunday HLS
Neither of the primates in 3630 have enrichment mirrors, but they do have used Kong toys. I haven't seen those in any of the cages for months. In December and January, everyone was throwing them out every time they saw them. I was told it's because they can't be sanitized properly after use.
I'm not sure what date this was, but one weekend Rachel told whoever was feeding the P and G monkeys in 3314 that she'd cut up oranges for them for their PM ob treat. She said she felt bad because they don't get an AM treat or cleaning treat because they have to be fasted, before dosing they just get one peanut and for PM obs treat everyone's always in a hurry to get out at the end of the day so all they get is peanuts - no one ever takes the time to get them fruit.
At a meeting, Eleanor made a point of telling everyone in large animals the peanuts and raisins are supposed to be used only when there's no fresh fruit available. When I randomly check the enrichment records in the rooms, I see peanuts and raisins being used almost exclusively with fruit being an exception. It's easier to treat the raisins and peanuts because they're kept in the rooms and the fruit needs to be cut and brought into the room each time.
I've seen a lot of primate rooms where the monkeys don't even eat their peanuts because they're so tired of them.

4/9/97 Wednesday HLS
Gene and I talked about his trip to the United Kingdom. He told me about their safety pharmacology methods. He shook his head when he told me about it saying they don't even have SOP's. He said they have no regulatory agencies monitoring them. He said when they do a safety pharm study they use Alpha Chloralose, an ether compound with no analgesic affect, to anaesthetise the dogs.
He said they intubate them by using an electric cautery iron to cut through the dog's neck to the trachea. He said, "Basically, they do a tracheotomy instead of just intubating them." [By putting the endotracheal tube into their trachea through their mouths the way we do.] Gene said when he questioned them about why they didn't just intubate them instead of doing the tracheotomy they looked at him like Hmmmm! That's something to think about!
He said they use the electric cautery iron to do cut downs all the time, even using it to expose veins and organs on still alive, under- anaesthetised dogs. He said the idea behind safe pharmacology is to monitor the animal's vital signs to get a normal baseline rate, then test material is administered and the vital signs continue to be monitored and recorded to establish the test material's affect on the animal and the animal's system.
Gene told me because the anaesthetic they use is inadequate and has no analgesic affect, the dogs' heart rates and respiration is abnormal with all these peaks and lows for long periods of time before stabilizing enough to begin the experiment.

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I asked how it would be possible to know how the test material was affecting the animal if they had abnormal rates to begin with. When I asked him this he shrugged and said "Exactly! They can't. They can't distinguish what's a result of the trauma of the procedure and what's a result of the test material. When they're questioned about it over there, they're allowed to say things like 'Because of my vast experience with this I know that such and such is a result of whatever...'
He went on to tell me I should see the reports they write after studies. He said they're so vague they can't even be read. Everything is written like 'It could well be that...' and, 'In my opinion such and such is normal and probably not a result of...' He said they don't back up any statements or data with proof leaving it open to interpretation. I asked if that didn't make everything worthless. Gene told me "It would here. We would never be allowed to be so vague." [He's told me before we at least have to go through the motions of finding some type of statistics to back up our findings.]
Gene said he asked them what they do if they're not able to get the animal to stabilize and he was told, "We throw the dog away and get another one." He told me while he was there someone aired a story about the lab. Someone had brought in video equipment and gotten some video of some people hitting dogs and stuff and that it was pretty bad. He said four people were terminated that could be identified in the video and there were probably more coming. He told me he's going to make some suggestions about their safety pharm program and they'll be sending someone over from the UK in a couple of weeks to look at how we do things.
Gene told me Irene and he had done a safety pharm experiment on a dog the other day and used Alpha Chloralose to see how it did work. He said they put the dog under with isoflurane and gotten some data under those conditions and then switched to Alpha Chloralose. He said the values shot way up right away and there were all sorts of peaks and' valleys in the data - nothing was consistent.
Some of the techs were talking about a monkey with an extremely swollen arm and rolling their eyes that Nick had obbed it as slightly swollen.
Brian told Terry as she walked though the tech room "Have fun lancing feet..." then he laughed wickedly like he knew some secret about the veterinary care.
The cardio team is supposed to practice tubing pigs tomorrow. Brian asked Terry if we needed to fast them first since they'd be anaesthetised and sacrificed after. Terry said we should because it's difficult to do and it will be even harder if the pigs are vomiting while we do it. Rodney claims he can intubate pigs. I couldn't help but think of the bloody tracheal tube pulled from the only beagle he intubated a few weeks ago.

4/10/97 Thursday HLS
Only worked one hour.

4/12/97 Saturday HLS
In Proctor and Gamble study 3630, no one did PM obs on April 9th. No one signed for treats for PM obs on April 4th and 9th. No one signed for AM treats on April 11th. In 3282, room 949, on April 11th Yao did vet treatments. No one signed for treatment on the 11th. The last treatment was the 10th and I signed for the 12th.

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Theresa told me Penny broke the dog's leg in study 3327. She said it was the first time Penny had cleaned a room alone and she came running to Theresa to tell her to come and look at this dog because she thought she broke his leg. Theresa looked at it and told her to tell Walter. Walter and someone else went in to look at it. She said that's when the exercise cages were all finally fixed.
I have a hard time believing a dog's leg bone could be broken completely in two just by falling through the hole in the exercise cage. I think it could definitely be broken that way, falling through and twisting especially if someone was trying to drag the dog out while the leg was trapped - I'd be interested to know if it really happened when a cage door got slammed on it. This is pure speculation, everyone has told me it happened in the exercise cage. Only Penny would know for sure.
I asked Theresa how she managed to lift the big dogs in study 3323 out of and into the exercise cages because she's not as tall as I am and I find it difficult. She told me sometimes she just lets them run back to their cages from the exercise cage if her back is hurting. She told me Dean Rodwell had people on a tour one day and they were looking at her as she let the dogs run back to their cage.
Later, I looked through the window at her' and saw she was cleaning 3323 without taking the dogs from their cages. I saw her hosing out an occupied cage. She saw me watching her and later made a point of telling me she'd gotten tired halfway through and quit taking the dogs out.
Theresa told me about the first time she went in to clean the pigs, the new hairless pigs, just this week. She asked me if I'd seen them today, laughed and told me they were all beat up, that she'd really killed them when she cleaned. She said no one had told her they'd never been handled and she didn't know how to clean the cages. She said she didn't know you weren't supposed to let them out of their cages and when she tried to catch them to get them back in they each freaked out and had run blindly into walls and cages getting all scraped up and cut.
She said one has a swollen face and anther has a big cut on his face, the other one has all kinds of scratches all over. She said afterwards she told Rachel about it and Rachel took her in and showed her how to work with them. I looked through the window at the pigs and even from outside the room I could see the cuts on two of the little pigs and the swelling on the darker one's face.
As I was getting ready to leave, I saw Terry walk through the tech room and kidded her about working Saturdays after the last time. (She ended up looking at several animals and complained about just being there to catch up on her own work saying she was never coming in on a weekend again.) She laughed and said I know. "You guys are all going to hate me. Yimmer just asked me to look at an animal and I told him I couldn't."
Before I could ask her which animal and what was wrong, she asked me about my schedule - what hours did I work here and what my other job was like, expressing concern to me over the number of hours I worked. We visited for a few more minutes and she went back to her office. She had come in to the tech room to get coffee and didn't seem to be in a big rush to leave. I would have rather had her look at the sick animal than to sympathize with me for several minutes about my life.

4/13/97 Sunday HLS
Cesair wrote a vet request for a primate in the extra colony. The primate has watery stool almost continually and has for weeks and weeks, it would probably be safe to say months and months but I haven't copied the obs book. I looked through it and saw the monkey has been written up for watery stool dozens of time since last fall, even being treated for it once, unsuccessfully.

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The sap's say emesis should be written up if it continues for more than three consecutive days. When Cesair wrote it up, it had been going on for much longer than three days.
I looked through the window of room 906, study 3346, and saw Penny cleaning the puppies? cages without taking the puppies out first. She was bent down hosing out a cage with a dog in it. Spraying a stream of water toward the back of the cage. When she saw me looking at her I was just turning from the window and as I rounded the corner I heard the door open as she looked to see who had been watching her.
When I went in to see James today he stared into my eyes and then down at his feet as I told him goodbye. Most of the monkeys in 3314, including James, will be killed on Thursday and Friday this week. They're scheduled for all kinds of blood work and ECG's as the study winds up and I told him I may not be able to see him again. When I told him this he came to the centre of the door and pressed his whole face against the cage staring at me. I stroked his cheek and whispered goodbye and as I stood up and he moved back to his foetal position, it occurred to me, too late, that he was pressing his face forward for a kiss.
Stephanie and Penny were talking about George and a monkey in 3314 who died on Monday. Penny was saying George thought it was his fault the monkey had died and Stephanie said no, it wasn't that. They didn't know why it had died. When I asked her about it she told me it was a group three monkey and they have no idea why it died.
The necropsy didn't reveal anything and Arpad had screwed up and rinsed the brain off or something before he should have. They didn't know what the cause of death was they thought it could be meningitis or something. The four dogs in Kevin's radioactive study are in metabolic cages at the end of the room.
In study 3282:
Room 949:
8199 - fearful
8197 - hyper
8200 - very fearful and wooden
8198 - fearful
8194 - hyper
8195 - friendly
8193 - nervous
8191 - hyper
8189 - fearful/friendly with coaxing
8192 - very fearful, cowers
8190 - fearful
8187 - friendly
8185 - fearful, friendly with patience
8188 - friendly
8186 - fearful
8183 - fearful and wooden
8184 - fearful
8182 - friendly but unsure
8181 - fearful, reluctantly friendly

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Room 950: 8219 - friendly, hyper
8217 - friendly, submissive
8220 - fearful and wooden
8218 - friendly
8215 - hyper
8216 - extremely fearful
8210 - fearful
8209 - hyper
8207 - fearful
8208 - fearful, reluctantly friendly
8206 - friendly
8205 - fearful, hyper
8203 - fearful
8204 - fearful
8201 - fearful, wild when handled
8202 - fearful
I sent Mike Toth an e-mail telling him we're out of unicide, the disinfectant we're supposed to clean the cages with. We've been out for over two weeks.
I sent Terry an e-mail telling her I filled out a vet request for another foot sore in 3282.

4/16/97 Wednesday HLS
The cardio team did surgery on several rats today to set up a DSI validation study - -practice. Two of the rats Rodney operated on died before he was through with the surgery. The first time, I asked him if his rat was breathing he said yes and continued to work. I told him I didn't think he was.
He tried to resuscitate him by blowing in a syringe placed over his mouth but the rat was already too far gone. His colour was extremely pale and he'd been dead for some time. Rodney always thinks if he can see the heart beating everything's all right. The second rat died the same way, he was operating, I bent over to look pointedly at the balloon indicating respiration and he saw his rat had died. While he and I think Al was operating, Irene noticed the pump on the anaesthesia machine was not working properly.
The rat on the right side of the table was continually waking up and the anaesthesia adjusted as the rat was held down. While we waited for a replacement pump and for Mike Toth to come in and replace it, Lisa had to physically hold Rodney's rat down. The rat was sitting upright on the table, his hind feet taped down his tail swinging wildly as he tried to escape. His abdomen was cut wide open exposing internal organs.
Rodney continued to operate while Mike worked. While we waited I tried to move the anaesthesia hook up from the prep room in but the pump was bolted on and immovable. I kept asking Rodney and ?? Al if they wanted to move the rats into the prep room until the pump was fixed. They wouldn't do it. At one point while Mike worked Rodney told him to make it fast. He taped the rat's tail to the table while he worked because it was moving all over and Lisa couldn't hold down the rat and the tail both.
Throughout the day, there were problems with the anaesthesia machine and rats were under-anaesthetised one minute and dead later. Al told us later, the tubing is precisely measured and controls the amount of gas the animals get. Rodney and I both told him the tubing had been cut twice to replace the nose cone apparatus.

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When I left, Al and Rodney were debating whether an inch or two of tubing would affect the rats so dramatically. I asked Gene, Al, Lisa, Rodney, Yao and Irene who was responsible for checking the equipment prior to surgery and no one answered me. In surgery, Carol Allgate from the UK was in observing during the pump failure. Everyone in the room was trying to pretend like there was no serious problem with the anaesthesia even as Lisa held Rodney's rat down.
The pump in the prep room is bad, too, and the switch has to be jiggled just right for it to keep running. I told Al, Irene, Gene, Rodney and Brian about it but no one seemed to acknowledge it. Yao eventually fixed the pump on his own - I don't know what he did or what knowledge he has to do so but no one else ever looked at it as far as I know. [I don't remember when Yao fixed the pump if it was over the weekend, that day, or the next day.]
The dogs in the bone study were moved into dose groups and there is finally a signed protocol. Lisa told me she was putting the standard memo into the study file - the one they always put in explaining dogs were ordered without a signed protocol. The vague wording of the memo dances around the deviation with wording like before distribution of a final protocol, or something like that [check memo at office].
At lunch Al told me I've broken SOP's twice today, once by bringing soda into room 955 when we had our meeting and by wearing a grey lab coat to the lunchroom. I didn't hear anyone mention SOP's when the rats were crawling disembowelled off the operating table. I saw Lisa clean study 3627 without removing the dogs from the cages.
When I told Gene I was having trouble knowing how to do things because a lot of people didn't do things according to SOP - and protocol and as I've mentioned to him before different people tell me different things. He told me to always go by the rules unless that's not what everyone else is doing and it would disrupt things to do it the right way. I told Gene I didn't understand GLP.
I told him that it was hard for me to reconcile the fact that everyone spends hours every day scrutinizing husbandry records for, i.e., eights that don't look enough like an eight to the person reviewing, I told him I had to clarify a check-mark over the week-end - someone had me re-write a checkmark because my straight stroke down extended just past my short stroke upward and I had to footnote it and re-write the checkmark and all this is going on while people aren't even bothering to take the dogs out of the cages when they clean. Gene responded by saying he didn't know that was going on and he could see what I mean that animal care should be at least as important as the paperwork. When I looked at him and raised my eyebrows he hurriedly said or maybe even more important.
Gene told me he knew what I meant about things not getting done right. He complained to me that just the other day he had asked some of the cardio team to make sure there was enough oxygen in the surgical suite. He was told there was. Later, they had an animal on the operating table and the oxygen ran out. There wasn't a spare tank in the suite and Gene had to run to receiving to get another one. He said the tanks weren't brought to where they are normally kept so just finding one took a long time.
Gene says we'll use a primate from the extra colony for practice on Friday. He told us "There's a monkey Terry wants euthanased because he's sick so we'll save him until Friday so we can hack him up a little." He said we're doing the DSI rat validation just to show the UK visitor, Carol Allgate. He said we will use the DSI dogs for safety pharm - we'll administer things to alter their blood pressure and heart rate and monitor them, then we'll sacrifice them.

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A primate in 3221 got out and was chewed up by some of the other monkeys. He has a huge on his arm and his hand. He pulled his stitches out the day after surgery.
Lisa asked me if I was quitting. I told her I was thinking about it and told her exactly what I had told Gene that morning that people weren't even taking dogs out of the cages when they cleaned while I was re-writing check-marks. Lisa laughed and told me she knew.
I walked by room 949, study 3282 and saw Lisa cleaning the dogs' cages with them still inside. She saw me watching her and when I went into the room 15 seconds later with the camera running she was trying to drag a damp frightened dog from the back of her cage. I was surprised to see Lisa cleaning this room, in particular, without taking the dogs out because she always tells me she spends time touching each of the dogs whenever she goes into ob or feed or whatever. It seems to me that spraying a hose all over and under an already freaked out dog would undo all that touching and reassuring.
I saw the sacrifice order on the door of the Proctor and Gamble study. There are eight monkeys that will be kept alive for a recovery period. Four of the control animals and four of the group five animals - two of each group from each room. James is scheduled to die on Friday. Stephanie was bringing the monkeys to the necropsy room and checking their numbers off the sacrifice order as they died. Throughout the day I saw her carrying sedated primates wrapped like sleeping babies in garbage bags down the hall to the necropsy room.
In the afternoon I had a chance to go in and ask if I could observe. I saw the primate they were killing, number 1071, had a lot of cuts and sores on his legs - I've seen cuts like that many times after extensive and frequent blood letting and these primates had been having TK bloods for the past 24 hours. I asked the necropsy staff if you needed a degree to work in that department. The necropser told me no, sometimes they get people right out of high school. Stephanie and one of the necropsy guys were trying to find a vein to inject something into a group one primate. I could see the primate's hand clenching and unclenching as they searched.
Stephanie was holding off and the necropser was injecting. In the past, I've seen the necropsers hack a big chunk of skin off a monkey's arm to expose the vein. The necropser injected part of the substance into the monkey before he realized it wasn't going in, it was just blowing up under the skin. They switched arms and tried again, finally getting the solution administered. Just a few seconds after that the necropser tapped on the primate's eye and asked if he was dead before walking away. He left the room and Rich came in to do the necropsy complaining that Henning was supposed to be in there doing it and he didn't know he had to come down to do this until a few minutes ago.
He tapped on the primate's half-closed eyes with the end of the scalpel saying "You dead?" before slicing into him. He completely opened the thoracic cavity and severed an artery (vein??), saw the blood being pumped out by the heart said "you could be more out - sorry" as he continued to slice and hack. He handed the guts to Dr. Bolte who had come in just to examine and take samples from them. They told me they'd found intestinal parasites in about half of the primates (check video for exact verbatim and numbers) they called the parasites flukes and I asked if they were liver flukes. No one answered me but they told me they had found mostly eggs in the intestines and one adult worm. I asked how that could happen because the animals are routinely wormed during the quarantine period when they arrive.

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Stephanie told me later she was told the monkeys came from some foreign country and if they were heavily infested it would be hard to get rid of all of the parasites. When Rich took the monkey's eyes out he asked Valerie who was labelling the tissues if they were keeping right and left separate. She told him they hadn't been and he made a joke about not doing that since 1960.
Rich and Dr. Bolte tossed body parts onto paper towels and trays as Valerie labelled them. Before long the primate was nothing more than a bloody flat mass, quickly scooped up and tossed into the garbage can at the end of the table as Stephanie poked her head in asking if they were ready for another one.
I made myself go in and talk to James one last time. I didn't want to - I walked by all the empty cages with their doors hanging open in the next room, the former occupants now in bloody bags in the freezer down the hall. My little friend looked at me and stretched out so I could rub his stomach one last time and quickly slouched over into his foetal position when I said good-bye. In 3627 one of the dogs broke a toenail. There was blood all over the cage and the dog.

4/19/97 Saturday HLS
I walked by the Proctor and Gamble rooms, empty except for the eight recovery animals. James is dead.
Yao told me they didn't use the primate from the extra colony for practice surgery. There wasn't any time. I asked if the primate had been euthanased. He told me he didn't know and shrugged. I went into the extra colony and was relieved to see the sick monkey. I was not there and his cage was empty.
The DSI USDA numbers appear to be 1255 - 2765462, 1190 - 273023, 1272 - 2779773, 1264 - 2770504, 1367??

4/20/97 Sunday HLS
When I went in to 3627 and 3628 to dump the puppies' food and ob them I was surprised to find almost all of the bowls empty. The puppies in these two rooms are being scoop fed, an approximate 400 grams is scooped out and given to them - everyone knows about what 400 grams looks like in the containers we scoop with. Normally, there is a lot of food to dump out - some of the puppies eat all of their food someday and just part of it someday.
It varies, and even though some of the bowls are usually empty there is always a lot of food to dump out. When I saw all the empty bowls I checked the husbandry chart to see if Irene had remembered to feed them. She signed for feeding. In study 3627 I put a handful of food in one of the puppy?s bowls and he gobbled it up as if he hadn't eaten for days. I asked Dilip if he had gone in and dumped the room and told him what the situation was. He said right away she didn't feed them.
I tried to reach Irene, but her phone number was not available, I couldn't get it through information. I left a message for Eleanor at home to call me with Irene's number and never heard from her - no response it all, even after the fact, to see if everything had turned out all right.
I stayed for an extra 45 minutes after I was done with my work hoping Eleanor would call with Irene's number. I went back into the 3628 and noticed there was a little spilled food on the floor.

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I had cleaned the room prior to feeding so I knew Irene had fed the dogs. She had probably just used her own method of feeding - she has told me several times she doesn't' feed the fat dogs as much as she should. She only gives them about half the amount we're supposed to. I imagine she has the same feeding rule for puppies - feed them less because we always dump a lot out after.
I dosed with Irene in 3282. The capsules are really big and they often get caught in the dogs' throats. Irene showed me how to drag them to the waterspout and put a little water in their mouth and hold their mouth closed so they have to swallow.
It's really hard for me to drag these scared dogs forward and shove the capsule down their throat. I've spent so much time cleaning these rooms and trying to reassure them it violates every sense of trust I've tried to establish. Often when I'm in the rooms I wonder if it's the right thing to try and go slowly with them so they aren't afraid. I always tell them their smart to be afraid -that people will hurt them here.

4/23/97 Wednesday HLS
I asked Irene if she fed the two rooms of puppies on Sunday. She said of course she had. I told her about all of the empty bowls - that there was hardly anything at all to dump. She just smiled at me and I asked her if she had used her own 'fat-dog' method of feeding, giving less food to the puppies because there's often so much waste. She laughed and said, "You know me too well, you know all my secrets."
It made me feel bad to think the puppies weren't given enough to eat. They're scheduled to have femoral catheters surgically implanted yesterday and today, why not at least give them the correct amount of food.
Yao and I did most of the prep work. Gene intubated the first two or three dogs and Yao did the rest. They were given propofil IV in their front leg via a butterfly. Yao had a hard time finding the veins on almost all of the dogs. Lisa tried to talk him through the procedure a couple of times. Most of the time, Yao just fished around until he hit the vein and got blood back. At least one of the dogs had to be masked down because he couldn't find a vein.
Al and Brian did most of the surgeries today. Yesterday Yao and Irene did most of them. Someone from QA came in to watch.
Irene came in the prep room and told Gene Rodney was removing the endotracheal tube from the dog by just pulling the balloon off, popping the cuff, instead of deflating the cuff with the syringe. Irene said I thought we were supposed to save the tubes and reuse them - he did that all day yesterday too. Gene said, "Ya know - I just asked him where all the tubes were from yesterday and he said he didn't know."
This and the oxygen tank incident last week are just two more examples of how commonplace it is for people at HLS to lie and say they've been doing something when they haven't or don't know something when they obviously do.

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When I walked by the room where the puppies are after surgery, all in jackets and attached to big machines, I could hear them whining and crying. When I went in I saw the last puppy operated on was sitting shaking at the front of his cage saliva hanging from his mouth.

4/24/97 Thursday HLS
Rodney asked Irene if he could help take the pre-test bloods in 3627. He told her he knew how to do it. When she told me I laughed and asked if she believed him - that he knew how. She said she did. I held dogs for Rodney and knew right away if he did know how he hadn't done it for some time, and he had never used the spaz tubes (vacuum tubes).
He fished around and around inside the dog's neck and when he did manage to hit the vein, the blood didn't go in the collection tube because he had 'blown the tube' before he even started. Pushing the needle into the vacuum tube before it's inside the skin causes is to lose the vacuum.
He went through at least five tubes each time sliding the needle all around inside the dog's neck. Twice the dog got huge haematomas immediately because he went through the vein and blood gushed out under the skin. Finally, he asked Irene to bleed that dog and she instructed him how not to blow the tubes. He complained that the dogs' having the jackets and foam collars on made it hard to find the right spot. He tried another dog and finally jumped at the chance to leave the room and help someone else with something. Lisa and Irene finished bleeding the dogs.
After he left the room, Irene told me and then Lisa and Yao that Rodney had obviously never used spaz tubes before. She said she could see right away that he didn't know the first thing about taking blood this way.
Rodney says he has a lot of surgical experience on larger dogs and says he used to work in an animal emergency clinic where he did things like suture animals after trauma and euthanase animals. He is a frightening person to work with because he's overly confident about what he can do and rarely admits he doesn't know how to do something. He jumps in and just does it trying to fake it. It's very hard to put a trusting vulnerable little animal on the table in front of him and watch him struggle to pass himself off as an expert at the animal's expense.

4/26/97 Saturday HLS
The larger of the two cages used for dogs measures 39 inches deep, 45 inches across, and 353/4 inches tall. The smaller of the two cages used for dogs measures 36 inches dt1ep, 36 inches wide and 32 inches tall. Normally, a mix of the two cages are used. People just pull whatever cage is closest to the front of the room, however, there are a couple of technicians that try to only pull the larger cages for their studies - if, they're available.
In room 955 where Gene has been doing safety pharmacology, I found two full bottles and one partially full bottle of Alpha Chloralose. This is probably the same stuff Gene used to duplicate the UK safety pharm program. The bottles looked extremely old - -the labels were slightly yellowed. There wasn't an expiration date on the bottle but it was labelled like test material is. The receipt date was 12/28/93, the company code was S-13, and the manufacturer was Fisher Scientific.

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In this room I also saw a gallon of Hibiclens with an expiration date that had past. It looked like the same gallon of Hibiclens I gave him a few months ago to dispose of because it was expired. The bottle was wrapped in plastic just as this one was. I've never seen any other bottles wrapped that way. I always just give the expired supplies and drugs to Gene because pharmacy doesn't want them to be returned there as the sheet I record them on says. I wonder how many other expired drugs and products Gene just reuses in other discreet venues.
Around 11:30 Todd told me he still had three dog rooms left to clean and he'd probably be done by 12:15 or so. He only had to wait for Lynn to ob one of them after twelve before he could start. I asked how in the world he could get done so quickly. I told him it takes me at least 45 minutes to an hour to clean each room. He told me "On the weekends when I clean I don't take the dogs out of the cages."
He said "During the week when there are people around, you bet I do then - I do a good job and go by the rules but on the weekends - forget it! I can be in and out of a room in about 10, 15 minutes - less if there's nothing on the grill. If there's stuff on the grill than I have to open the cage and hold the dog on one side while I spray it off. Otherwise it's just hosing the pan out."
He told me he hates cleaning 3282, Lisa's study [the bone dogs.] He told me he got bit in the second room once when he was cleaning. He took the first female on the lower left out and while he was carrying her to the exercise cage she chomped his hand. He said he dropped her fast when that happened - threw her on the ground swearing and when he picked her back up to get her in the cage he just threw her in by the scruff. He told Eleanor he didn't want to be put on the schedule to clean those rooms anymore. She told him with scheduling problems she couldn't promise not to put him on, he'd probably end up cleaning in there anyway.
He said Eleanor told him "Just don't take the dogs out of the cage when you clean." He looked at me and smiled and nodded and said, "So that's what I do! I just don't take the dogs out of the cages when I have to clean in there." He said when he first started [last month], he always took his time and stretched his schedule out, milking it for all the time he could get but days like today he just wants to get out of here.
He told me he heard Eleanor has gone as far as she can go in this company. He said being group leader was the highest position she can get. I asked if it was because she doesn't have a college degree or something. He laughed and told me "It's because she just has a GED." I said "You're kidding?" and he said, "Nope, Eleanor just has a GED."
There is a hand written sign on the door of room 950 to watch out for 1787, the dog who bites. Lisa told me last week to watch out for her if I have to dose her because she snaps. She said someone must have done something to her because she just started doing that - she didn't when she first came.
I've known since I started that most of the employees don't remove the animals from their cages when they clean. Some people try to hide it and some people are blatant about it. On the weekends, especially, animals are rarely removed from their cages prior to cleaning. There has been this accepted thought that technicians are too good to clean cages and it's acceptable for them not to waste a lot of time doing it. When Dean Rodwell stepped in and authorized more associate technicians to be hired so there would be a "dedicated animal care staff," to solely take care of animal husbandry, I assumed they would be dedicated to animal care.
I guess the term means their time is dedicated to animal care as opposed to other tasks because the dedication I've seen includes, Todd, Theresa and Penny not removing animals from the cages when they clean, Theresa injuring and then laughing about injuring the pigs during cleaning and Penny breaking a dog's leg.

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Todd boasts about handling the frightened bone-dogs improperly to keep from being bitten.
Todd also talked to me about the dogs in study 3282 and what's in store for them in a few weeks. [The dogs' front leg will be broken and put in a splint]. He talked about how bad they'd be to work with after that, saying, "They're bad enough now, can you imagine what they'll be like after that?" Then he said "They should just break all of their legs so they'll be easier to work with." He joked about how great it would be to move them from to cage to cage if all of their legs were broken.

4/27/97 Sunday HLS
Yao and I did food consumption in 3282. When Yao put the food bowls back in the cages he did not put them back in order. All of the dogs got another dog's bowl put back in their cage. I've been told by Kevin and Kathy that they should always only get their own bowl back because saliva could contain test material and alter the study.

4/30/97 Wednesday HLS
Gene sent me an e-mail telling me the DSI validation calls for values to be taken from the dogs as they are killed but the validation [protocol?] only calls for four dogs to be used and they have five set up and he'd see what he could do. He followed with another e-mail telling me it was against USDA regulations. When we spoke later he apologized and said USDA didn't allow animals to leave the facility. I asked if it was a liability thing.
He told me it was from the USDA and just part of their regulations. I asked if it was federal then - a federal regulation that animals couldn't leave the facility to be adopted out. He told me it was. Later, he sent Terry Kusznir in to talk to me about the dog I wanted. She told me it was all PET A's fault and all those other animal rights groups. She said way back [in the sixties?] when the animal welfare act was established PETA said OK, you can't use pets for research and in response the research community said OK, you can't use research animals as pets.
She said it was designed to foster a perception that research animals are a different species than animals people have as pets she said they [the research community] want people to recognize a dog used for research as a completely different species than, say, the German Shepherd you have at home." Brian was in the room with us and he asked her if pets are never used for research anywhere. She said you used to be able to go down to the local pound and get any dog or whatever and use for research but now you can't after the animal welfare act.
I asked her if it was federal or state, and did she mean that pets are never used for research. She said not in New Jersey maybe still in some places but she didn't know exactly what states. She said she was sorry but she emphasized again that they want people to recognize animals used for research as different species than animals kept as pets.
Irene told me they've had to repair four of the catheters in the Magainin catheter dogs for study 3627. She said the catheter material they used this time is very stiff and has "memory" if it gets twisted or kinked at all it stays twisted and the doesn't allow the saline or eventually the test material to flow through. If there's blood in the catheter it clots up easily when the test material isn't flowing through. Gene ordered this material because it's cheaper.

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It's been one week since the twenty puppies were operated on. Normally, the dogs are given a one-week recovery period after surgery then the dosing starts. Irene told me the dosing isn't scheduled until next week, making it two weeks since the surgeries. With all the problems the catheter material is creating, she's worried about how many dogs will still have functional catheters when dosing begins. Because they've had to surgically repair so many catheters, everyone is behind on starting the next Magainin study 3628.
This study also will use 20 puppies with surgically implanted catheters. Surgeries are scheduled for May 1st and 2nd. When Gene asked Irene how things were looking for surgeries tomorrow Irene told him "We're really behind because we've spent so much time repairing the catheters in 3627. Gene nodded and told her to do the best we could.
At the end of the day Gene told Irene, Rodney, Lisa and I he wanted to warn us that dosing for the two Magainin studies 3627 and 3628 may be delayed as long as two weeks because they're having trouble getting enough test material. Meanwhile there are 20 puppies already suffering with catheters, jackets and tethers - many having to be re- operated on to repair them, and 20 more scheduled to be operated on tomorrow and Friday. The dosing for 3627 is just a 24 hour dose and for 3628 it's a 120 hour /5 day dose.
After dosing is completed the jackets are removed and the catheters tied off. Because there is no test material for dosing the dogs will suffer, possibly weeks longer, with the uncomfortable jackets and tethers. There is no provision in the protocol for this and an amendment will probably have to be added to the study file. I would think IACUC approval would be altered by the extended time frame, however, Irene told Rodney there is no limit to the amount of time the dogs can be hooked up to the pumps.
The schedule for study 3627 and 3628 were changed back and forth several times over the last few weeks because the sponsor didn't think they would have enough test material. It appears they decided to keep the original time frame knowing they wouldn't have the test material. Terry conducted a meeting about procurement and receipt of animals. She mentioned many ways in which HLS is deficient. She said the extra rodent room breaks AALAC rules and we get written up for it all the time. Both mice and rats are kept in the same room in the extra colony even though she's told them [decision makers at HLS] they need to be separated.
She said they tell her there's no room. The extra rodent colony is in C-wing. I've been in that wing several times in the last seven months and have never seen animals in any of the other rooms in C-wing. At least one of the rooms across the hall is used for cage storage only. I think most of the rooms are just used for storage.
She reprimanded Brian about making a joke about picking animals up off the street when she asked what procurement means. She asked how many people had heard about the video from England. Saying "OK, some of you have, some of you haven't. If there were a video recorder in this room, all PET A would need to do is take an excerpt of what you just said and sell it to Hard Copy or Current Affair and it would make not only us look bad but all research would look bad. Even though you're joking you can't go around saying stuff like that. We could all get in trouble." Terry said rabbits and guinea pigs should not even be kept in the same wing because of disease transmission but that's just the way we do it here and again she's been told that's just how it is when she's recommended changes.

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She mentioned a dog stuck his head out of his cage in the hall during cage changing 0- yesterday and got hit by a cage being pulled by. She said his tooth got broken and that is an example of an injury, which could lead to a secondary infection.
During cage changes, dogs are transferred to clean cages in the hallway, then their dirty cages are pulled by them. The hallways are very narrow and when the dirty cages are pulled by the clean cages containing dogs they barely clear the occupied cages. Often the dirty cage gets stuck between occupied cages and the wall and they have to be tugged and pulled, usually dragging the occupied cage with them when they're pulled free.
Dogs routinely stick their heads out of the feed bowl holes and look up and down the hall. If a cage is dragged by while the dog's head is outside the cage it's inevitable injury will result. Everyone hates cage changes and try to get through it as quickly as possible. The object is to get the cage pulled to cage wash as quickly as possible and I've never seen anyone take the time to lock bowls into all of the bowl holders to prevent the dogs from injury during cage changes. I've never seen anyone look behind them as they pull to make sure none of the dogs' heads or other body parts will get caught when the cages roll by.
Mahsa told me once when I started "The hallways are too narrow for this. It's very dangerous." They really should do this a different way so the dirty cages aren't pulled by another row of cages in the hallway. It would be very simple and only slightly more time consuming and labour intensive to pull the clean cages to a section of hallway where the dirty cages would not have to directly pass them. It would entail carrying the dogs further down the hall to put them in a clean cage and then pulling the occupied cages a longer distance.
A small price to pay to ensure the safety of the animals. This system would really be easier because the hall is so narrow the cages bounce off the other cages and the wall and get stuck so much it takes extra, frustrating pulling and tugging to navigate the passageway. I have horrible visions of dogs getting their heads crushed between cages every time I pull a cage down the hull.
Terry talked about the difference stress makes on blood values if an animal is bled when stressed.

5/7/97 Wednesday HLS
Irene told me yesterday was a day from hell. She and Al had to do surgeries on nine monkeys for Proctor and Gamble, putting telemetry devices in their uteri. They aren't done yet, they have more monkeys left to operate on. She said, "I've never even done it before and I had no idea what I was doing. I don't know why they had me in there doing it. And then we had to work straight through we didn't even get a lunch [break]."
I remember when Al operated on the monkey for the pilot study Irene wasn't even in the room - she said she looked in once and it was too crowded so she didn't come in. The reason they had to set up the monkey for the pilot study was so they could find out if they could even do it - if they could implant a telemetry device into the monkey's uterus and monitor uterine contractions.
She told me she had trouble with one of the surgeries. She couldn't find the vein she needed and had to go to the other leg. Then when they checked the ECG reading from the telemetry implant they told her she was supposed to have left one of the leads on that other side anyway, the one she'd closed up. She told me you should just see her she has so many scars and stitches she's a real mess. She told me they were so busy they had to work straight through without a lunch break.

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She said a lot of stuff got missed yesterday because we were so busy. Lisa's dogs didn't get fed till late. Brian had put her on the schedule to feed them at 2:00. But, she was in surgery until four and got out and realized she should have fed them. They had to put a memo in the study file that they'd been fed late and food consumption would still be done at the same time. She said Rodney missed a bunch of stuff on his schedule. [Which is nothing new. He was hired as a technologist. He missed AM obs in Lisa's study on the 5th. He was supposed to feed DSI dogs and didn't a few weeks, ago - the memo reads inadvertently not documented or something.].
She said they had that going on, there were catheters to repair in both her Magainin study 97- 3627 and Al's Magainin study 97-3628. She said they were so busy with all these studies and so short staffed all kinds of stuff has been getting missed. She said the rats arrived - for Yao's Magainin study 97 -3625 and Rodney's Cephalon rat study - Rodney's study calls for rats to have jugular catheters implanted and at some point in the study, blood samples will be taken from the catheter and they will be transfused with blood from extra rats from the same study - ordered just for this transfusion - they'll be anaesthetised with C02 and drained of blood.
She told me people were coming from Ethicon to surgically implant six pigs with a mesh used for hernia repair. She also told me her dogs in 97-3627 were starting a 24 hour infusion dose today. Al's dogs in 97- 3628 would need to be sorted into dose groups and hopefully we wouldn't have any catheters to repair.
Irene told me there was one monkey in 97-3630 who was still all hunched over and none of them had really eaten anything. She said they didn't even eat their raisins, which was really unusual because they love those and always eat them right up. She didn't write a vet request or ob it in the viability book.
When I went in to clean the monkey room I saw she had already done it. Earlier, when I went in just to look at them, I noticed two of the monkeys had blood in their cages. 7107F, in particular, had a lot of blood pooled in the back of her cage. The primate to her left had several bright red drops of blood in her cage, in the pan and on the flooring. I saw in the obs book Irene had marked them all WNL. I think she may have hosed out the cages so I wouldn't see the blood and check the ob book, not knowing I had already seen it.
In the tech room, I heard her tell Al none of the monkeys had gotten their shot of analgesic after surgery yesterday. He nodded and she added, "It's in the protocol, too." I asked her if we should go give them the analgesic now - do we need to go give them their shots? She said no, it's too late now. They all look fine, they're climbing up on their cages when you look at them and there's only one who still looks hunched over.
I recognized one of the monkeys right away when I went in. Number 7028F was in 96-3314, the Proctor and Gamble NG study that just finished - it still has eight animals in recovery but all the others have been euthanased. She was an extra, and stayed in the room throughout the dosing, massive bloods and ECG's. She had chronic diarrhoea throughout most of the study. Something that may have been cleared up after they found the flukes during necropsy. Another monkey, 7107, is extremely fat, she looks familiar to me I think she was in 3314 as well.

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Irene and I went in to ear-tag the puppies in 97-3628. They already have pre-test ear-tags in but the numbers change when they go on-test. There were about ten of the 16 puppies left to ear-tag. She doesn't like to use the ear-tagger because she always ends up - breaking her artificial fingernails when she closes it on the puppy?s ears so she asked me to do it. When we ear-tagged 97-3623, she had me ear-tag the four puppies in that study, too, for the same reason.
The old ear-tags are removed by using a dog nail clipper to cut off the stem of the ear-tag that the numbered tab slides through. She didn't bring the nail- clipper into the room to remove the existing tags saying we used the big pink- handled scissor yesterday and that seemed to work just fine. I held my breath when she put both hands on the scissor handle to close it on the hard plastic ear-tag. The puppies' ears are so floppy and mobile, I couldn't believe she didn't inadvertently slice through one of them. She had a hard time cutting through the ear-tags on the third dog - eventually trying to just randomly snip off hunks of plastic.
She tried to just manually yank it through even though it wasn't' properly cut off - enough of the wide stem remained so it wouldn't slide through the other part of the tag easily nor would it slide through the bloody hole in the dog's ear. When she tried prying it off and pulling at it, the puppy cried and screamed. She eventually got the tag off and when she had the exact same problem with the next dog's tag I ran to get the proper tool for her to use. When the other ear tag was removed the large round hole in the dog's ear was exposed and they all looked sore, raw and bloody. Some of the holes looked infected. I tried to line up the new tag with the existing hole but on dogs Irene had struggled to cut the tag off, there was so much blood it was hard to see where the hole was.
All of the puppies jumped and pulled back when the tag was put on, some of them screamed. Because they're attached to the tethers and have jackets and foam collars on, the dogs can't even shake their heads after the ear-tag is pushed through. They can't rub their sore ear with a foot or shake the pain away. All they can do is jump wildly in a tangled circle as the pain burns through.
One of the dogs had a severed catheter line by the time we got to him. Irene said it's a good thing we had to finish ear-tagging this afternoon - if we hadn't that dog could have either bled to death overnight or his catheter wouldn't have been usable by the time we found him, it would have clotted up. The puppy's tether was swinging from the infusion pump and his jacket was soaked with blood. There was blood pooled in the bottom of his cage and splattered all around it.
She spliced a new catheter line to the three inches of bloody tubing hanging out of his back. She told me to put the dog in the sink while she got the new jacket and tether ready. Yao came in to help get the dog put into his new jacket. I used hydrogen peroxide to clean the clotted blood off the dog's side and back.
Yao held the rest of the dogs while I ear-tagged. When I tried to take my time arid line up the new tag with the existing hole he said "Yeah, yeah, is good, go ahead. That's fine." From where he was standing on the other side of the dog I know he couldn't see the existing hole or the tag. Once, the wide male stem didn't connect with the female part of the tag after it was in the dog's ear.
Yao tried to yank the stemmed part of the tag back out through the hole in the dog' ear. The dog screamed in pain - the wide plug on the end of the tag is broader at the bottom and there's no way it could humanely go back through the hole in the ear. Yao continued to pull at it and I had to push his hand out of the way so I could cut the tag off and try again. A couple of times, I could feel wet drop hitting my arms from the blood and tissue as the tag cut through the ear.

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I checked the memos in the study file for 97-3627. On the morning of 4/24/97 dog 8283M had a positional problem with the catheter, which had to be surgically corrected. On the morning of 4/25/97 8295F had a severed catheter line. The morning of 4/29/97 8299F , 8300F, 8302F and ?? all had to have their catheters surgically corrected.
Brian complained to me about how hectic the schedule is and how we don't have enough people to do the work. He told me about the primate surgery for P&G saying, "Frankly, I didn't even read the protocol before the surgeries...".
Chemical analysis didn't have the IV dose bags ready until around 4:00. The dosing was supposed to start around 12:00. Michael from QA came to audit dosing. I stayed to help Irene, we were stagger dosing them - starting the infusion on each dog 5 minutes apart so when the dose stops we would have time to do the post dose ECG. Irene started the first bag and I asked her afterwards if I should go get alcohol to wipe the needle cap as per SOP.
She looked at QA and said should I sneak and go get it?" She did go and get the alcohol and used it 'on all but one of the needle caps -that QA watched. After just a few start-ups, the auditor said it was "too boring" so he was leaving. As soon as the QA auditor left the room, Irene put the top back on the alcohol jar and put the jar on the bottom of the rolling cart, no longer following SOP as long as the QA auditor was not in the room.

5/8/97 Thursday HLS
Yao was obbing the P&G monkeys in 97-3630 and 97-3631. They are all being kept in room 954. Currently there are nine primates who pave been operated on. More surgeries are planned - probably for Friday.
He asked me if I knew which monkeys belonged to which study. There are two study numbers on the room card at the door of the room, and two obs books but none of the occupied cages are marked with anything but the animal number written in black paint marker. He went on to say none of the animal numbers on the cages match up with the list of animals listed on a form in the book. [Incidentally, there is no clear listing of animals being in the study in the book, he was going by a list that was part of a sentence on another form like an antibiotic record, or bodyweight form or something.] He pointed out several monkeys who were not listed in either book. He went to get Irene, who had us verify their ear-tags against the marked number on the cage.
When Irene came into the monkey room she was not wearing proper safety equipment, no tyvex, no hair bonnet, no plastic boots. She had a mask and gloves on and as far as safety equipment goes, that's it. She was carrying a brown, glass gallon jug and some gauze saying to me "Don't ever do this." I asked what. She said "Don't ever, ever, bring the acetone into a monkey room. We're not supposed to - We're supposed to use it in the hall only." The first time I helped with a primate cage change in large animals I was told the same thing.
Kevin told Rachel who was using acetone in a room they weren't supposed to have it in there. Rachel answered him with a snotty remark and continued to use it in the room telling him we were all right there and nothing was going to happen. That day she had found the acetone that was in a plastic bottle with a squeeze nozzle.
The first primate I looked at was marked wrong. On the hi-8 video I pan to the just- removed number to the left of the black paint-markered 7101F and was in fact number 7101F.

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Irene said right away Al had put her in the cage. The rest of the tags matched the number on their cages but there still was no identifying study number to differentiate between studies. Of my own accord, I used the paint marker to write the study number on each set of cages. I asked Yao if he had obbed number 6602F as having a hunched appearance and if he had obbed 7102F and 7107F as having red exudate in their cages. He said "They're all fine, WNL. I pointed to the red exudate and said, "There's blood in their cages - don't you think you should ob it?" He said, "They are all fine. No problem!"
I went to Terry's office and asked her if I had to fill out a vet request for her to look at the surgery monkey's to see if they needed an analgesic. She handed me memo paper from her desk and told me to write down the room number and the animal numbers and she'd take a look. I wrote room 954, 6602 - hunched and 6659 - slightly hunched.
Irene saw Terry go into the monkey room and asked what was going on. I told her I asked Terry to look at them. I thought at least one of them was in pain and still all hunched over - like yesterday. Terry couldn't get 6602 to turn around so she could look at her incision. She kept sliding the false back around hoping to get a glimpse of the incision site. She kept saying, "This monkey is so thin she looks like she's been in a concentration camp. She's so thin!"
She looked at the untouched fruit in their cages and asked if they'd been eating. I said they'd barely eaten anything yesterday and today. I told her only 7028 even touched the oranges I put in. Terry looked at the whole tangerines in their cages and said "Tangerines!! Wow!! Yeah - they're not feeling good if they're not eating those." Finally, she gave up and looked at one of the visible sites on another monkey. She commented on the really fat monkey in a nearby cage. She asked Irene "They didn't have any analgesic after surgery, did they?" Irene shook her head. I looked pointedly at Irene and said, "No, they didn't get anything." [There is a micro-cassette tape of this - check verbatim.]
Terry asked why they didn't, saying "It's abdominal surgery you guys, that's really bad..." Irene told her "1 had such a bad day that day and when we were getting ready to leave I said to the guys' Aren't we supposed to give them an analgesic - I think it's in the protocol.'" Terry interrupted her saying "It's in the protocol?" Then she said right away to me "Give them all a shot of analgesic." I asked her if I had to fill out a vet request. She didn't answer and kept asking Irene why they didn't get one on surgery day. Irene said it was late when they left and I said sarcastically "Because it was nine o'clock at night..."
Irene gave she and me a dirty look and said, "No, it was later, I asked the guys and they said 'no"'. Irene is a senior technician and performs all kinds duties including TB tests, tattooing, dosing, invasive surgeries, animals care taking, running studies, doing the paperwork documenting studies, meeting with study directors to plan studies, drawing blood etc, etc. She has worked at HLS for almost six years and is more than qualified in HLS' eyes to give a simple IM injection. She obviously knows how to read a protocol and knows how important it is to follow them.
I told Terry the monkey had been hunched over yesterday, as well, and they [Irene, Al, and Brian] knew it and commented on it but no one did anything. I pointed at two of the primates who have blood in their cages and said "Those two have blood in their cages. They had blood in their cages yesterday;' too." Terry didn't respond at all to that.
Terry asked Irene if they didn't get the shot because we didn't have the stuff [medicine]. Irene told her "We have it, it's just that it had been such a long day..." Irene complained that we've been too busy and overworked and that they just received the protocol the night before [or maybe that morning -check tape]. Terry said "I know, I just signed it at five o'clock the night before so I know you didn't get it...".

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I interjected that Brian told me he didn't even read the protocol before the surgeries. Terry asked what we have [for painkiller] and Irene told her "The Flugemine stuff... We all went into surgery to look at the medicine. There are three bottles of Flumeglumine in the cabinet. Terry was musing aloud about the dosage saying, "They're all about 3 kgs right?" Irene said "No, there's the skinny ones and that one is so much bigger..."
Terry figured aloud and made the dose calcs on the same sheet of paper I'd written the animal numbers on telling me to give them all .16 of analgesia. Irene was worried that dosage wouldn't be right for some of them. Terry said, "When it's something like painkiller, it's better to give them too much." She said "It's such a small amount and a lot of that gets lost in the needle and the hub of the syringe so it's better to give them a little extra to make up for the lost dose." (I have always thought the markings on a syringe are accurate and when you draw the medicine into the syringe from the bottle with the needle on, the needle and hub are then primed once you get the correct dose into the syringe. After the material is injected, the needle and hub are still primed and if the plunger on the syringe is pushed all the way in, the correct dosage has been administered - if it was measured accurately to begin with).
In other words, the material left in the needle and hub doesn't matter if the medicine is measured with the needle and hub on. If you draw the medicine into the syringe without a needle, on adding the needle later - then part of the dose would be lost because the needle isn't primed. I've heard Terry tell y Rodney and Brian and Lisa this before, too. After the P&G pilot monkey surgery a few weeks ago, she said the same thing "When you're dealing with such a small amount it's better to give a little more because some of the dose is lost in the hub and the needle.] Terry mentioned in the room she'd check with the study director to make sure it's ok to give them analgesic.
Some of the monkeys who weighed close to three kgs got the same dose as the bigger monkey who probably weighed close to 4.5 -5 kgs. The bigger monkeys probably didn't even benefit from the painkiller because she figured the calcs based on a 3 kg monkey.
The post surgical antibiotics are calculated the same way - a mean body weight is determined through averaging the bodyweights. In study 3631, the mean body weight for the three males was 4.4 kgs. When they received the first antibiotic injections the dose was based on a mean body weight of 3.9 kgs, averaged from the weights of the three females and the three males. The antibiotic dosage differed by 11 mls.
I asked Terry three times if I should write a vet request before she agreed I should. I had to print up vet requests for 3631, there weren't any in the viability book. When I went in to have her sign the vet requests Terry asked me if they'd all had their shots. I told her I have them ready but I wanted her to sign the vet requests before I gave them because she had mentioned checking with the study director. She said "That's good thinking." and before she signed the requests she asked me if I thought the hunched appearance and description I wrote fit all the monkeys in the room. I told her I thought it did, that only one of the females had eaten and in my opinion I thought the description was accurate but someone else may not agree.

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I told her I was specifically concerned about the two I originally told her about and thought they should all be listed since she authorized analgesia for all of them, mentioning again that only one of the nine had really eaten anything. She said something about no one noticing it yesterday and I told her they had noticed it yesterday, that the one female in particular was hunched but no one did anything about it. She signed the vet requests smirking at my descriptive comment "... probably because no analgesia had been given."
She asked me about my leaving HLS, inquiring if I was happy about it or sad or what. I told her I was happy not to be having to work so much - about having more free time. I told her, now after this, I should probably be happy because now no one would talk to me in the tech room. She asked why, and I told her because I filled out vet requests for the monkeys.
I told Gene that I had asked Terry to look at the P & G primates because they were, hunched over and not eating. I told Gene they hadn't been given any analgesic after surgery