OSU cat fight continues

November 7, 2002

When Michael Podell left Ohio State University this summer, he left behind his controversial research project involving giving methamphetamines (speed) and feline immunodeficiency virus (kitty HIV) to cats. But the $1.63 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse funding the project was awarded to the university, not Podell, and the research continues in his absence.

Lawrence Mathes and Maria Hadjiconstantinou-Neff are taking over for Podell, and their research has undergone a name change, from “Feline Model of Neuroaids and Drug Abuse” to “Psychostimulants and Lentiviral Infection of Neural Cell.”

Protect Our Earth’s Treasures, the local animal rights group that’s done its best to keep the heat on the university since the project began almost two years ago, was predictably not happy. POET Director Rob Russell thinks the name change is part of OSU’s damage control, but he reserves much of his ire for what he believes may be the rationale for continuing the research.

Through a public records request, POET obtained a copy of a June 10 e-mail sent from OSU Director of Research Communications Earle Holland to Vice President of University Relations Lee Tashjian. The e-mail contains this line: “NIH [National Institute of Health, of which NIDA is a part] is very interested in having the work continue here under the direction of another investigator so that it doesn’t look like the animal rights protestors won on this issue.”

POET and national group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine have long contended that the research project was unnecessary. But has it really all boiled down to PR?

“The quote is correct,” Holland said, noting his discomfort at being singled out publicly for an internal e-mail to his boss. Correct, and “purely out of context.”

The (less exciting sounding) backstory, Holland explained, is that when Podell decided to leave, he mistakenly told NIH he wouldn’t be continuing the research and “turned back the grant.” But while he was principal investigator, the grant and the project were technically OSU’s, not his. The “smoking gun” e-mail of Holland’s dealt with addressing whether Podell’s statement to NIH would be the official university response or not.

“It’s pretty absurd to think one would continue with research of this magnitude” for PR reasons, Holland said.

Not that Holland wants protesters to win the PR war, of course. His personal opinion is that determining which projects receive support should be based “solely on the idea that the best science will win out, not other factors.”

In the meantime, the next phase of research is currently cat-free. Podell published his findings—that FIV-infected neural cells exposed to meth can spread the virus as much as 15-fold—in June, and Mathes and Hadjiconstantinou-Neff will now use cell cultures in their research, not whole cats.

There is the possibility that the research will return to cats in the future, however, and it’s that possibility that will likely keep POET interested.  —J. Caleb Mozzocco