The cat spat is back.

Ohio State University confirmed yesterday that a controversial methamphetamine research project involving cats will continue, even though the lead investigator left campus after receiving death threats.

"Projects such as this one facilitate the design of treatments for humans and animals alike against many deadly viral diseases,'' OSU President Karen Holbrook said about the $1.68 million project.

Michael Podell's original five-year research plan, approved by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in October 2000, called for using up to 120 cats to determine the effect of methamphetamines on the development of the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. The cats are infected with the feline immunodeficiency virus, given the drugs and then run through a series of experiments and surgeries before being killed and dissected.

Individuals and animal-rights groups nationwide put Podell under siege. Among the hundreds of calls and e-mails he received were several death threats, he said.

Podell's former co-investigator, Lawrence Mathes, will continue the project with pharmacologist Maria Hadjiconstantinou-Neff, using a grant of $331,782 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This is on top of the $723,250 previously given Podell by the agency.

Protect Our Earth's Treasures, a Columbus animal-rights group, will continue to protest the project, with a demonstration Friday at OSU's board of trustees meeting, POET director Rob Russell said.

Russell said OSU correspondence obtained through an open-records request shows that public relations, rather than science, is behind the project renewal.

An e-mail allegedly sent June 10 by Earle Holland, OSU director of research communications, to campus lab animal director William Yonushonis, states: "NIH (National Institutes of Health) 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 protesters won on this issue.''

C. Bradley Moore, OSU vice president for research, said public relations "doesn't influence my actions and my support for doing animal research.''

Cats will continue to be used at some point by Mathes, said Moore, but the short-term focus will be on laboratory cellular studies that don't require the killing of animals.

Mathes and Hadjiconstantinou-Neff will continue Podell's work to determine whether methamphetamines stimulate the replication of HIV in humans. Cats are being used because researchers view the feline immunodeficiency virus as an animal model for HIV.

Mathes, professor of veterinary biosciences and director of OSU's Center for Retrovirus Research, was involved in research a quarter-century ago that developed the first vaccine against the feline virus.

Although Mathes has used cats in past research, POET didn't object since his goal was to cure the disease in cats, Russell said.

POET contends that the feline virus is not a valid model for HIV, and the topic is being explored elsewhere without sacrificing animals.