Introduction to Suffering: OSU Course Will Instruct Students How to Inflict Spinal Cord Injuries

 

Remember that old rhyme, "Step on a crack and break your mother's back"?

The Ohio State University has taken the rhyme a step further by offering a course which will instruct students how to break the back of 189 rats and 60 mice..

P.O.E.T. is asking you to speak out against this class and for the animals. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is supporting us in our efforts to alert the public to this course. Click on www.pcrm.org to learn more information and how you can help.

Please follow the link and sign the online petition which is calling for OSU to use alternatives to this course.

July 8th - Read the P.O.E.T. response to OSU concerning this course.

Demonstrations Held in 2004

Welcome reception for attendees of the Spinal Cord Injuries Course at The Blackwell Hotel on the OSU campus, July 18th

Mobile billboard, sponsored by PCRM joins the POET demonstration at Wiseman Hall, July 21st

Cruelty 101 in front of the OSU Student Union, July 22nd

The next demonstrations - June 26th to June 29th.

 

Press Release

Local animal rights organization, Protect Our Earth's Treasures, is launching a campaign in hope of discontinuing a course at The Ohio State University entitled: Spinal Cord Injury Techniques Course.

"This class is to train students in methods to create spinal cord injuries in animals," said Rob Russell, Director of P.O.E.T.

Participates in the course will execute laminectomy procedures (cuts to open access to the spinal cord) and perform injuries using different contusion injury devices. An illustration is shown below.

Illustration by Jeremy Nichols

PCRM has provided a critical review of many aspects of the course. Some highlights from the report are that, "Laminectomy itself is one of the problems with the rodent model. The process of removing the protective tissues and systems before injury removes the possibility of mirroring all the pathologic changes that are a consequence of accidental spinal cord injury."

The report concludes by stating, "No matter how reproducible, quantifiable or statistically significant the rodent model may get, it will never model the human SCI condition in a clinically important manner. Teaching students to produce an established model in a rote fashion again and again will do little to help seriously injured people. Students should be trained to think of new ways to contribute experimental knowledge to the problem that move away from clearly flawed animal models."

Local animal activist, Linda Orenchuk, RN, said, "In recent years, so much has evolved in the field of medicine. There are now digital scanners, image-guided surgery, virtual surgery simulation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI's), positron emission tomography scanning (PET scans), and stereotactic imaging. It is possible to obtain a 3-D picture of the heart and, wondrously, to have a "Virtual Colonoscopy" done. OSU, where they have been breaking backs of animal since 1973, is offering a class in inflicting spinal cord injuries on rats and mice. What next?? A seminar on how to tear wings off butterflies?"

Please write to OSU and urge university officials to take action:

Jacqueline C. Bresnahan, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Basic Research
Department of Neuroscience
The Ohio State University
4190 Graves Hall
333 W. 10th Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
bresnahan.1@osu.edu

Karen A. Holbrook
President
The Ohio State University
205 Bricker Hall
190 North Oval Mall
Columbus, OH 43210-1357
holbrook.79@osu.edu

UPDATES

Feb. 8, 2005 - NIH to Investigate the Spinal Cord Injuries Techniques Course

The course returns to OSU July 10, 2005 and runs until July 30. Protests are being planned.

On May 23, 2005 POET participated with PRCM in a news conference to address this course.

Please view an ad that PCRM ran in The Columbus Dispatch on May 20, 2005. The ad is an Open Letter to President Holbrooke by Mary Ann Lederer of Cincinnati who is paraplegic as the result of a gun shot injury.

Read the Columbus Dispatch article concerning the conference.

During the last three weeks participants in the course have systematically injured 189 rats and 80 mice spinal cords by major surgery and blunt trauma followed by distressing behavioral exercises after the injuries. This program is designed to expand the use of rodent experiments, diverting attention and funding away from clinical spinal cord injury research far into the future.

We have held a number demonstrations and certainly have drawn attention to the issue. In front of The Blackwell Inn on the OSU campus - June 10, 2005. Welcoming the back breakers to their course. The mobile billboard was provided by PCRM.

One of many demonstrations held outside of Wiseman Hall where the course was being taught.

After employees from inside Wiseman Hall took some protest signs we figured we just needed a bigger sign.

For more information go to www.pcrm.org/osu the The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

 

DEMONSTRATIONS IN 2006

As another three-week Spinal Cord Injury Techniques Course approaches (July 16-August 5), P.O.E.T. is again planning a series of demonstrations against this cruel and wasteful course that is being offered at The Ohio State University.

Instead of teaching such crude techniques, OSU should be encouraging future researchers to “think outside the box” and develop and use in vitro and clinical research, imaging, and post-mortem techniques that will truly advance our understanding of human spinal cord injury—and aid the search for a cure.

For the many reasons we are opposed to this class click on and visit the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine website http://www.pcrm.org/resch/anexp/osu.html and read "Help Stop Inhumane Spinal Cord Classes at OSU"

Protest schedule:

Monday, July 17th - Wiseman Hall - 11:00am-1:00pm Tuesday, July 25th - Wiseman Hall - 11:00am-1:00pm
Thursday, July 27th - Wiseman Hall - 3:30pm - 5:00pm
Monday, July 31st - Wiseman Hall - 3:30pm - 5:00pm
Thursday, August 3rd - NEIL & 11th - 11:00am-1:00pm

Pics from demo's

 

What's next in 2007 - The course changes P.I.'s , protocol numbers, and animal numbers.

 

Updated: Jan. 16, 2006