Squid Pro Quo

where my do rag at?

So there are lots of reasons I haven’t been writing.  I go through violent waves of being too bored or too depressed or too excited or too enraged to write anything.  I feel like anything written during those times aren’t accurate representations of what’s going on with me.  How do you say, “Sometimes I just want to die” without it sounding like you actually may expire?

I’m not working at all right now, which leaves me very little to do with the massive amount of mental energy I have.  My attempt to worm my way back into employment at the hospital where I worked until recently have been thwarted by a man who doesn’t care for me much.  You know how they tell you to never burn any bridges in business?  Well I had to learn this lesson the hard way.  The man who is replacing my former boss and who would be my new boss just happens to be the same man I’ve spent the last two years terrorizing.  I never thought there would be a situation in which he would have hiring and firing power over me.  DO NOT BE THIS STUPID.  People change jobs; get promoted, etc and you never know whom you’ll need a favor from.

When my loyal snitch told me about my name getting shot off the table I admit I curled up in my bed and felt sorry for myself for a while.  My first reaction was, “oh my god how can anyone think I would be bad at any job ever?!  I’m adorable and smart and I’ve done so much good work at XYZ Hospital!”  While I was in the disturbing clutches of plotting my revenge on this man I remembered the time I lost Dr. H’s protocol and when called out on it, slammed the phone down on him in a fit of rage.  It wasn’t that one-sided; he was being a dick.  He did call me back immediately and screamed at me for about 15 minutes.  Then there was the time I called him a “fake dermatologist” (he’s a pharmD specializing in dermatology but not an MD) when he offered to look at my eczema.  Oh and then there was the time I said, “nice nut huggers!” when he rolled in one morning in a full body lycra bicycle nerdsuit. The memories kept pouring in.  And for the first time in a long time I realized that I am not as likeable as I think I am sometimes.  And I don’t even think I’m very likeable.  I think they call this, “self-awareness”.  And it may have cost me this job. 

So I curled back up in the bed expecting to redirect my rage from Dr. H to myself but instead I began cackling wildly.  If I had to do it all over again I’d slam the phone down on him even harder.  No one can take that away from me.  That man really is the king of all donkeys.

There are many more things that we need to go over, dear readers, but I’ve decided to break them up into a few posts so you don’t have to read huge blocks of my ramblings.

On the agenda: The ridiculous hunt for two new roommates (remember fun with craigslist from last year?), my obsession with the news and how its eating away at my sanity like a tumor, and completely changing the name of this blog.

Dear drunk men everywhere:

I have brown hair.  I wear prominent glasses. I'm a little snarky. It may take all of your RAM, but try try try to sort out that I am NOT:

Tina Fey

or Sarah Palin:

or Jeanne Garofalo:

And to answer your question, yes.  Yes I've been told I look like her before.  Which one?  Take your pic.

Don't shoot me, bro

So you may or may not have heard depending on where you are about the BART police officer that shot and killed a 22 year old black guy on the Fruitvale Platform on New Years Eve.  If you don't know about this I suggest searching "BART shooting" on SFGate and you'll have more information than you ever wanted.  You can even watch all of the video recordings of it!  I've seen like all 20 angles.  It's fucked up each time.

Anywho, now there is a t-shirt featuring an updated version of the BART logo. 

Original Logo:

Upgrade?:

from Matthew Williams Design

So what say you San Franciscans and others?

I'll snatch it down

I sure am learning things the hard way lately.  It’s just been life lessons out the ying yang.  Realization station. 

First, my employment at the rat death camp has ended.  Devotees will remember I resigned back in early December.  One crisis after another had pushed my departure back, but I finally made a run for it on Friday.  This of course opens me up to the question, “OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WTF RECESSION!!!”

I’ll tell you my plan.  It’s not a good one, but it’s the only one I have.  By the middle of February the animal facility director, animal facility junior supervisor, animal welfare committee chair, and myself will have all stepped down from their positions.  I’m going to let them get a little more fucked before I swoop in and offer to help out FOR A NOMINAL FEE.  No one tells AAALAC to shut the fuck up quite like I do.

The last day of work was surreal.  Although I plan to totally worm my way back into their system to help fix a mess I was instrumental in causing for an inflated hourly rate, I was pretty emotional.  I was hoping that my boss, D, would come around and finally speak to me.  He didn’t, of course, and by the time my exit interview was over, he had left for the day.  I still don’t know what he’s mad about this time.  I’m not saying I didn’t do or say anything unprofessional; of course I did.  I just can’t think of anything that would justify the sting of being shunned by a man I’ve followed around with adoring puppy love for the past two years.  One of the surgeons told me not to worry about, “he’s a fucking lunatic”.  It’s almost like I won the mental illness lottery.  I found the one man more ridiculous, stubborn, and grudge-holding than I am so everyone is distracted from my own bad behavior.  That was a freebie.

The chair of the Committee, Dr. B has been amazingly gracious and flattering these past few weeks.  It took my resignation for him to stop taking me for granted.  He wanted me to come to his lab to say good-bye before I left on Friday, and when I got down there I had a really touching moment with a man I had mocked endlessly and resented for so long. I was down there trying to not start bawling as this joyless little british troll was telling me how high my skill level was, how precocious and smart I am, how I could be the IACUC chair, and how he couldn’t have done anything without me.  All I could think about is how D and I would sit in my office and cackle making fun of Dr. B’s stature (“He could fit in a teacup!”)  his cold British nature (“Dr. Foggyknickers needs a crrrrrrrrumpet!”) and blaming him for all animal fecundity issues (“They’d mate if that man weren’t such a drag”) 

And then at the end of it all the 65 year-old frat boy boss I wanted to fit in with totally dropped me like a child and the man I thought had tortured me was my biggest fan all along.  I felt wrong.  Not in the guilty sense, but in the incorrect sense.  I don’t often tell myself, “Leslie, you were incorrect” especially when its something like judging character.  Two years of feeding myself wrong information and congratulating myself on unsound judgments about my bosses all caught up to me as soon as I saw Dr. B’s eyes begin to water.  Was he going to cry?  Was he capable of crying?  All I could think about is how earlier I explained to my replacement that Dr. B sold his soul to Satan for a blueberry scone and some earl grey tea and couldn’t feel feelings.   I hate being wrong.

So I’m unemployed.  I’ve been trying to write a proposal for my former employer for when I make my swoop.  I think I have a pretty solid plan and some great ideas for the program, many of which the ACOS is already excited about.

 I like to go to the bottom of the hill to the deli to pick up diet soda and bagels.  Yesterday as I was readying myself to run down there I noticed that I slid my diamond ring off.  Do I always do that?  Yes.  I’ve done that for as long as I’ve lived here, it just took me that long to catch myself doing it.  I always think to myself, “If I’m mugged, at least they won’t get my ring”

I recalled over the holidays talking to my friend Alice who lives in a Puerto Rican section of Brooklyn.  Being in Nashville was such a world away from my life in San Francisco, and I can only imagine it was the same for her.  The Nashville that I know is better referred to as MANSIONLAND.  My childhood friends come from exceedingly wealthy families and the holidays were an excellent time to discuss over-tipping, superfluous graduate degrees as a means of avoiding work, lamenting about how you can’t train the iPhone to say the N-word, and uniforms on baby nurses.  By the end of it my SFgBFF (San Francisco gay bff who grew up with me in Nashville ) and I would pout and whine when there was no one around to invite us into their mansion to smoke pot.  WHYYYYY DON’T WE HAVE A MANSSSION TO GO TO TONIGHT?!!?! 

I digress.  In the middle of mansion hopping Alice leaned over to me at the bar and a painful gutteral moan came from within “FUCCKKKK I LIVE IN THE GHETTTOOOOO”  And in that instant she said the one thing I’ve been too proud to admit.  I, too, live in the ghetto.  Not only do I live in the ghetto, but you would SLAP YOUR MOTHER if you knew how much I pay to live where when I leave my house I have a gang of teenagers yell “BITCH I’M GONNA COME ON YOUR FACE!  I KNOW YOU AINT NEVER BEEN WITH A BLACK MAN BEFORE”  (true story)

So you’re catching me at a bad time.  I’m unemployed, angry, and living in the ghetto.   However, 2009 is already WAY better than 2008.  That’s got to be worth something.

Stream of Consciousness

Have you ever done something that surprises yourself so much that you don’t trust your own memory?  I just had an experience not 20 minutes ago that I have to write down this second or I know the exact words will fade away.   

I think my blog persona is a little more outrageous than my real life persona.  Just a tad though.  Each day I grow a little older and a little more accepting of the cruel twisted fact that I am who I am and I have to live with that forever.  I think this fundamental concept fills everyone with a certain amount of despair.  I think confidence is simply coming to terms with that fact.  When I do something that shocks me I realize that I am becoming more like what my inner dialog sounds like.  I write my inner dialog as they occur.  I don’t know how to do anything else.  I would make a terrible fiction writer.  Inner Leslie and Outer Leslie are beginning to really mesh together.  I feel like a complete adult almost and no longer like a teenager.  Is this 25?  Or am I just getting bitchier?  I have twice now told my 65 year old boss not to take his old man erectile dysfunction out on his staff. 

I digress.  So today on the bus ride home its business as usual.  There is  a man standing ahead of me rocking back and forth muttering “that don’t make no sense” over and over.  I peg him for a local loadie and don’t think much of it.  At the bus stop I see that he was actually talking to a woman with a small child that I couldn’t previously see.  As she and the little girl exit she screams “Stop saying it doesn’t make sense!” 

Well this for whatever reason sent the man into a state of terrifying rage that immediately silenced a bus full of people who just sat there gawking at what happened next.  The man who LITERALLY had only four visible teeth in his mouth (only the upper and lower “fang teeth”) races to the front of the bus and leans out the door and begins screaming an alarming string of threats at the woman with the child.  She screams back a little and he grabs the child by the arm and pulls her onto the bus.  The woman says “fine go with your father I give up” and I notice the bus collectively noting that this horrible man actually has legal parental rights.

He roughly drags the little girl to the back and they sit down and he is talking to her in a really disturbing way.  He says “fuck you” to her several times.  The little girl couldn’t have been more than five years old MAX.  I hear someone at the front of the bus say “I’m calling the police on that man” and she pulls out her cell phone.  In my head I do a quick mecca lecca high to the gods that someone else is going to intervene.

So much of my job is intervention.  The awkwardness is compounded by the fact that I’m a 25 year old imbecile quacking orders at doctors.  My loyalty to candor makes me ridiculous enough to do that.  But if I start trying to fix everyone’s problems during my personal time I’ll completely implode.  It was hard to look that little girl in the face though.  You could tell she was thinking “this is a fucking nightmare” or whatever the five-year-old equivalent to that is.

Shaken by the fact that I could still hear the horrible man visciously growling profane threats at his daughter with the face of stone, I acted impulsively at what I saw next.

A group of neighborhood toughs (omg did I just say “neighborhood toughs”?) were congregated on Fillmore and one had a pit bull on a leash and another had a poodle or some other gay wad fluffy dog like that.  The bus had stopped at a red light and at first the guys were keeping the dogs apart and everything was fine.  Then the pit bull started barking and growling and its owner drops the leash and allows it to attack the other dog.  Not one of the 5 or 6 guys make any move to separate the dogs and instead opt to watch them fight and laugh hysterically and point.

The dog fight seems to escalate so fast and I can still hear that god damn donkey behind me talking to his daughter and all of a sudden I could somehow see the capillaries in my eyelids throbbing.  Noises were muffled and everything was hot.  At the next stop I just get out and calmly walk over and ask the boys the question that I need to know.  “What the fuck is wrong with you guys?”  I ask them if they’re trying to get arrested for dog fighting and I am responded to with laughs and scoffs.  They did separate the damn dogs though.  This marks the most recent episode of me screaming at strangers in public.  I believe my last incident was when an army dude rear-ended me and I yelled at him until he ACTUALLY CRIED.

There is no way to compare the lives of those who ride public transit and those who drive.  It’s apples and oranges.  My daily experience is much different than that of someone who drives their own car. For example, when you wake up and get in your car to go to work you have that entire time to listen to your radio, zone out, wake up, drink coffee, and just clear your head and thoughts.  When I wake up to go to work I am thrust into a cess pool of humanity.  It’s like taking a luke warm bath with 50 of your least favorite people..  This morning before 8 am my butt was touching the butt of a complete stranger.  I’m not talking our butts accidentally bumped into one another.  I’m talking about a butt on butt interface for the duration of the bus ride. 

Other than the crippling stress of not having a job after next week things have been going so smoothly!  The buses have been running on time, I found 12 dollars in the pocket of a pair of jeans I rarely wear, and I found a perfectly formed single cigarette in the lining of my purse.  How could a single cigarette survive its tumultuous expedition in the folds of my purse for God knows how long and appear when I really wanted a cigarette?  How could that cigarette know that I was JUST thinking “I don’t want to buy a pack because then I’ll smoke them.  I just want one”  I’ll tell you how, bitches:

It’s already working.

How to Be a Dick While Traveling

By Land:

•    When the bus is approaching, don’t use this time to get your pass or fare out ESPECIALLY if you plan to use cash.  Wait until you are on the bus with a line of people behind you to root around in those pants.  Bonus points if you have only coins you have to count out.
•    Don’t wear deodorant.  Ever.  Make sure you have a really good stink going.
•    Headphones are only a suggestion.  Crank up the volume on your iPod so that everyone can hear your hot beats.
•    Eat something.  Preferably fried chicken.  Don’t forget the dipping sauces! 
•    You are an important person that carries around important things.  Make sure everyone knows how important you are by giving your bag its own seat.  In fact, you never have to ask for rides again.  Totallly take the bus home from ikea.  No one will mind they have to compete for space next to your new Klamfluuug bed frame.
•    Fart.  Often.
•    If you’ve ever had paranoid anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the works, now is the time to get them off your chest.  If the person next to you won’t engage with you just start projecting loudly. 
•    There are two kinds of bus doors in San Francisco.  One you open by pushing on a handle, the other you open by stepping down into the stairwell.  There will be signs with large letters instructing you how to open the door.  Ignore them, that’s what the driver is for.  When the door won’t open just scream bloody murder “BACK DOOOORRRRRR!” until it opens.
•    Why wait for the actual bus stop?  DEMAND to be let off wherever is most convenient for you
•    Offer the woman next to you free acupuncture sessions.  Tell her you can totally help her lose some of that weight.  She’ll really appreciate it.
•    Use the bus time to call friends.  Extra credit if you tell really disgusting sex stories.
•    Drink alcohol.  The smelliest kind.  In fact, just drink all day in preparation for your travel.  There is a fine line between a city bus and a party bus. 

By Air:

•    If you are in the airport terminal walk slow and get disoriented often.  Make dead stops mid-stride to look around you for signs.  Don’t worry about those people who prefer to walk assertively and quickly through the terminal to their gates.
•    1 carry on and 1 personal item ACTUALLY means 1 hugeass roller suitcase, 1 laptop case, your purse, your winter coat, and the huge bag of shitshow garbage you bought a the airplane giftshop.
•    Bark your drink order at the flight attendant before the plane has even taken off. 
•    When the flight attendant comes by for your drink order and you are in the middle seat and no logic would suggest your order would be taken first, just yell what you want really fast so you can be first anyways
•    If you are in the aisle or middle seat, insist the person in the window seat put the cover down.  If you can’t have the view, no one can.
•    If you’re in the window seat, make sure you get up five times to go to the bathroom.  Take a laxative if you have to. 
•    Being on a plane is like being in the 60s.  Free love.  The girl next to you totally won’t mind if you gradually move so your head is on her shoulder while you’re sleeping.  Snuggle.  Anything goes at 10 thousand feet.
•    At baggage claim go right up to the belt and crowd it.  Crowd it hard.  Don’t let anyone in even if they see their bag.  You have to be ready at all times for your precious things.  If the person next to you slams you with her suitcase while heaving it off the belt you are at ideal crowding distance (ICD).  Now throw a total shit fit about being hit with the bag.
•    You know you’re going to fly so you should look your best.  A good shoe choice is knee high boots with laces that go all the way up.  These take at least 20 minutes to take on and off.
•    Don’t take off your belt, shoes, coat, empty your pockets or take out your laptop until you are at the very front of the security line.
•    Annex both arm rests.  You are entitled to these things.
•    Put your seat ALL the way back and put your air vent on full fucking blast.
•    Your seatmates are built in  BFFs!  Tell them all about your job and your family.  
•    Snore

If all else fails just remember this:  you are a very important person with very important needs.  You are entitled to full cooperation from everyone you encounter.  You are the only person who has to travel so your needs are the only ones that matter.  You are special!

more dating misadventures

Bitches,

I'm trying to come up with a writing sample about dating and the internet for something.  I have to shave 200 words off of this but I'm just going to throw it at the wall and see if anything sticks. 
******************************************

The first time I used a website to meet new people was the first time I ever needed help meeting new people.  After a lifetime of knowing everyone and their mom in my hometown, relocation to another city for college was quite the shock.  I was terrible at fitting in socially with the rowdy college crowd.  I dismissed the men at my university as a potential dating pool the first time I attended a fraternity party and a spiked drink intended for some lucky young lass in flip flops and a ruffled mini-skirt wound up in the hands of my 250 pound male neighbor from the dorms.  As a group of us carried our drug bloated friend back to campus I realized two things: 1) This drunken heavy lifting will probably result in a memorable hernia and 2) I need to come up with a plan B for my love life. 

It was about two years later I met the man whose profile was the first to jump out at me.  From his writing he seemed distinguished, fiercely intelligent, and darkly hilarious.  We met at a neighborhood bar/restaurant he frequented for its free wi-fi and famed pub food.  Upon arrival I was alarmed to discover that my date was the one whose pungent body odor you could smell from the first few steps within the bar.  His stained clothes, unwashed hair and amphibious strappy nature man-sandals suggested he was not only less sophisticated than I was hoping but he may have been straight-up homeless. 

In the infinite optimism and patience possible only in females when it comes to dating, I sat down and introduced myself.  After all, I had thoroughly enjoyed our email correspondence and sartorial elegance shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.  Right away he hands me a stack of paper checks and asks me if I can duplicate his boss’ signature and sign them while we talk.  I agree to this even to my own surprise.  Besides, I already had a drink coming.

It was around the time he told me that he lived on a small boat that I decided to do the only thing that seemed appropriate:  drink until a bad date becomes a good date or at least a memorable story.   The night wore on in a drunken blur.  As I recall we decided to try our luck at one of the garish casinos in the area.  It was when I arrived at the marina that I knew I had made a huge mistake.  Going along with this lunatic of a man had landed me at the city’s edge with no way to get home and a brain that was not sober enough to think of an escape plan. 

Things took a turn for the worse when I politely declined to strip off my clothes and jump into the murky marina waters with him in a spontaneous moment of passion.  My reluctance to join him for a naked cathartic swim invoked some sort of unforeseen rage in him that honestly had me a little worried.  He took his clothes off and dived right in calling me a “fucking baby” on the way down.

“He’s going to make a stew out of my kidneys,” I thought to myself as I approached the edge of the boat to make a jump onto the dock.  I was waiting for the boat to drift close enough to be able to step onto gloriously dry land.  As he naked doggie paddled in the opposite direction I made a lunge for it, only to feel my left shoe fall into the water.  “No time to worry about that now,” I told myself and jogged with one shoe toward the parking lot where I had seen a police car earlier. 

“Hey where are you going?” I heard from behind.  I whipped around defensively to see my dream date running after me.  I had to focus all of my energy on not letting the image of the nude male form trotting, appendages swaying to and fro, push me past the point of no return with my already delicate sanity. 

Luckily the marina security showed up just then and demanded that my date put his clothes back on.  I asked the cops for a ride.  The cops asked me where my shoe was.  Neither of us got the answers we were looking for and I was left to call a cab to take the 50 dollar ride home. 

As the cab pulled away my now partially nude date optimistically yelled “I’ll call you tomorrow!”  

Now that even more time has passed and I have been on dates I found exponentially more irritating than that one I realize that maybe I judged too harshly.   Clearly this was not the right match for me, but after going on dozens of dates to the same bland restaurants listening to stories about law school and internet start-up companies I have to say that naked swimming in marina sludge is starting to sound pretty good right about now.  Onwards and upwards!

Animal Research 102

I’ve gotten a few emails regarding my last post from people with more questions.  I’m so happy that non-scientists are taking an interest!  This is an issue that affects everyone who has ever taken a pill, had surgery, had a baby, been sick, had a sick loved one, cared for an animal or cared for a human. 

There may be confusion with my request to email me.  If you have general questions about animal research and its regulation please post the question in the comments section in case your question is someone else’s question too.  If have any questions about the actual facility in which I work or questions about my specific qualifications, email me privately.  I don’t want my facility’s name to be “googleable” in association with this blog.  I don’t have explicit permission to be writing this on behalf of my institution and because of numerous threats of physical damage I like to remain as anonymous as possible while maintaining honesty.  I would hate to be responsible for any sort of attack from animal rightists.

Doctors and scientists are notoriously bad at expressing themselves.  They tend to be bad writers, bad speakers, and bad businessmen.  That’s a stereotype, but I often find it to be true.  Many people who work in labs do so partly because they are not suited for work in the public sector.  When confronted with the tactics of animal rights activists such as PeTA and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) the medical community tends to slink into the darkness.  We operate out of freestanding buildings built in the shadows of main hospitals.  We work in rooms with no windows.  We cover animals up with drapes when we carry rodent cages from one building to the other.  The goal is for no one to realize we’re doing animal research in the first place. 

Animal rightists will have you believe that this secrecy means that we are hiding cruelty out of shame.  What is really happening is we do not want to end up like this.  We all deserve the right to live without fear.   When questioned, most people say they agree with medical research but at the same time believe the horrible lies spread by groups like PeTA believing the ends justify the means.  Every one of you should have access to the information that the means aren’t as gruesome as you’ve been lead to believe.   I have a personal career goal of helping do whatever I can to teach and disseminate information to the community about animal research.  It shouldn’t have to be a dirty little secret. 

So I left off talking about LD50 tests.  I’ll keep going.

Q:  What is the Animal Welfare Act?

A: The AWA protects animals bred for commercial sale from mistreatment.   All animals covered by the AWA by law must be given proper veterinary care, sanitation, food, hydration, living conditions, exercise, etc.  Rodents, birds, and invertebrates are not covered by the AWA.

Q:  But rodents are the most commonly used laboratory animal!  If they aren’t covered by any law, how are they protected from cruelty?

A: I’m going to say something here that you will not hear from anyone else in my field because no one says it out loud: No one gives a fuck about the animal welfare act.  Let me explain to you why it is useless outside of agriculture.

The Animal Welfare Act is a federal law that no one enforces in medical research.  Is the FBI going around busting biology nerds all over the place?  No.  No one fears reprimanding from a AWA violation, no one enforces it, and most researchers don’t even use the animals it covers.  We have far more terrifying ways to ensure humane treatment is occurring.  If a grant for an animal protocol is from one of the agencies I listed before, you are required to abide by all policies of “The Guide” (capitalized…everyone in animal research knows what this slang means) (aka NIH’s Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals…full text here: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5140)  The Guide policies are basically universal.  If you have a grant that is NOT funded by an agency that requires use of the Guide (I can’t even think of any) then I can almost guarantee the institution where your laboratory is will require it.  It’s that universal.

Is it theoretically possible for animal research to occur outside of the policies of the Guide?  Yes.  Does this ever come up?  No.  You’d have to have a LOT of money of your own and not work at an affiliated institution.  Something tells me there aren’t many millionaire scientists conducting tests on rodents in their mansions with no chance of being published in any respectable journal.

Q: So if the Animal Welfare Act doesn’t keep people in line, what does?

A:  COMPLIANCE NAZIS, also known as Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW), Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC), Office of Research Oversight (ORO), and the National Institutes for Health (NIH). Reports of malfeasance to these organizations is very damaging for your career.  If AAALAC takes away your accreditation then everyone loses their jobs.  They will freeze your grant money or even take it away.  A report of an animal welfare violation involving rats (not covered by the animal welfare act) at my institution resulted in a report to that researchers funding agency (NIH) which resulted in loss of grant money.  This resulted in that person losing their lab and thus their job at the hospital.  Upon losing his job he was no longer eligible to live in the United States and was deported back to China.  So to recap – a man is caught abusing rats and it gets him deported.   That’s what I call ACTION.  BOOM.

Bottom line about the AWA is that no it doesn’t cover rodents, but trust me…the rodents are covered.  I come down on people….hard.  I turn it out to bitch.

Q:  What do you mean by AAALAC Accreditation?

A: AAALAC International is a voluntary accreditation service.   Some hospitals and chains of hospitals have made it a standard requirement that their research divisions become AAALAC accredited.  I work at one such hospital.  If we lost our accreditation, the hospital board of directors would stop funding our animal husbandry program.  Everyone would just get shut down.  This is becoming the norm from what I hear through the grapevine from other institutions. 

AAALAC just doesn’t give these accreditations out.  It’s a HUGE f-ing deal.  AAALAC’s standards are beyond strict.  I don’t even know why half the rules are even rules in the first place.  For example, we can’t have wooden door-stop wedges.  I had to go to the store and buy rubber ones.     You can’t scotch tape paper to the wall in an animal colony room.  This one really bummed me out because I like to write passive-aggressive notes to the researchers about various things they do that piss me off (like using nair in lieu of shaving over MY SINK and not cleaning it up so I’m left with stinky blobs of nair covered in mouse fur.  I wrote something to the effect of CAN’T YOU NAIR YOUR GOD DAMN MICE OVER YOUR OWN SINK BITCHES?  I’ve digressed again….)

Okay this has just turned into a rant about AAALAC , which I shouldn’t do because they are a fabulous organization with the best intentions.  They just are tough and make my life personally a living hell.  I’ll pick back up later.  Wow this entry was way more useless than the last.  I'll be more organized next time.

Chance Favors the Prepared Mind: Animal Research 101

I just discovered that my blog is reviewed under “Science Career Blogs”.  First, I should point out that I am overwhelmingly honored that anyone thinks I am a scientist of any kind and that it shines through on this mess of a blog.  Second, I’m so pleased with the glowing review!  In honor of this, I’ve decided to write an entry about my sciencey field of interest: laboratory animal medicine and welfare. 

I’m going to go through the questions and misconceptions I hear the most in both my real life, and from my job-related searches of animal rights extremist websites.  I’m making these questions up from memory so it’ll read like a Q&A but the answers are for the reader’s benefit.  I’m going to say up front that it drives me CRAZY when animal rightists don’t cite their sources in a usable way.  I am going to do what I can to source any data that I’ve looked up.  If I don’t cite anything then you should assume that I mean the statement with the understood qualifier “at my institution” or “in my personal experience in research”.   Obviously every institution is different.  I just know what I know from life and work.

Finally, this isn’t going to be a funny or witty post.  The following words and images I use may be disturbing or graphic.  This is your warning.  Also, I do not ever name the institution where I work because I literally fear for my safety after attacks made on the homes, lives, web pages, and reputations of researchers from Berkeley and UCLA.  I live with roommates who have nothing to do with animal research, and so if you have a problem, please leave a comment below or email me directly and I’ll be more willing to discuss the specifics of my experience with you privately.  

Q: What exactly do you do that makes you qualified to say anything about animal research in medical laboratories?

A: I play two roles at work.  I am a research compliance officer and I coordinate the IACUC at my institution.  In the past I have worked on the other side as a bench researcher in a toxicology laboratory at a major university.  We used a rat model.

Q:  According to The Animal Research War by P. Michael Conn, PhD and James V. Parker, PhD, about 50% of polled Americans are convinced that animal research is unregulated.  How true is this?

A: This is so far from the truth it’s not even funny.  If animal research weren’t regulated, I would have no job.  Thousands of others like me would have no job, so it’s about time those of us who work in laboratory animal welfare oversight speak up and justify our jobs!  Here is the rundown:

    Let’s say you are a scientist or a medical doctor and  want to see if Flinstone’s Vitamins have any positive effect on the recovery from stroke.  We already know the toxicity of Flinstone’s vitamins is very low.  We know they are safe because they’ve been tested on animals in the past by the manufacturer and have been shown to be safe.  We even give them to our children.  However, no one has taken a good look at how taking Flinstone’s vitamins after a stroke affects the recovery.  You are just the scientist for the job. 

So you apply for a grant.  A grant is money awarded to an institution to conduct research.  A grant is a full scale written proposal of what you plan to do and why.  You’ll need pilot data.  Pilot data is evidence that a few experiments of this nature have been performed and the data suggests that you are on to something. 

Grant review processes are B-R-U-T-A-L.  Almost all medical research is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which is supported by the federal government.  Other grant agencies include the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), NASA (remind me to talk about our mice going to space in 2010…SPACE MICE!) and The Department of Defense (DOD).  There are many non-profit research-funding agencies as well.  For example, at my institution we work with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.  Unless you are independently wealthy and have a few million dollars to spend on your own medical research (some doctors do) then you’ll be sending your grant off to the NIH with about a 10% of receiving approval for funding.  The NIH uses a peer review system so your fellow doctors and NOT bureaucrats will be reading and deciding the fates of these grant proposals.  My supervisor’s husband, a vascular surgeon, does NIH peer review every year.

Any of the above agencies will put your grant proposal up for discussion in what is called a “scientific merit review” This is where they decide if the experiment could lead to health benefits in humans, animals, or both.  While an idea to genetically cross a bunny and a kitten is really cute, it will not stand up to a scientific merit review. 

So let’s say you are one of the lucky ones that receives funding.  Time to start work!  WRONG! Now you need permission from your local institution’s IACUC to do your funded study at that facility.  Which leads me to the next question….

Q:  What is an IACUC? 

A: The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC…pronounced eye-uh-cuck) is a committee of persons at any animal using institution.  _There are requirements for membership.  There must be at least one non-affiliated laypersons (non-scientist), one laboratory animal medicine certified veterinarian (your dog and cat vet won’t count) , and the rest must be made up of qualified (doctoral degree in a scientific discipline) scientists.  The committee meets about once a month.  Sometimes more sometimes less depending on the size of the institution. 

The IACUC reviews animal protocols (the written document that decribes the details of the experiment) and votes one of three ways- approved, disapproved, or approved pending modifications. 

Q:  How hard is it to get the IACUC to approve your protocol?

A: Much to the dismay of everyone I deal with on a day to day basis, it’s not easy.  Much of my job is meeting with scientists and doctors and help them plan their experiments before they even submit their protocol to the IACUC so they are more likely to be approved.  Often first time researchers simply don’t know what  the most humane precautions to take are, or they need help securing veterinary drugs their human medical degrees don’t allow them access to.  That’s where I come in to save the day. 

Q: So how does the IACUC review an animal protocol?

A: First I get it.  Every institution will have someone like me who does the organization of the committee.  The doctors, scientists and laypeople who vote on the IACUC have jobs and lives of their own.  I’m there to deal with the day-to-day issues and document everything tediously to present to the Committee at our monthly meeting. 

So first I get your protocol.  It’ll be about 40 pages long and it’s on a standard form so you can’t dodge the hard questions.  When I receive a protocol I do an immediate screen for the following:
•    Pain Category (will discuss later)
•    Species
•    Hazardous Agents (carcinogens, teratogens, toxic chemicals)
•    Biohazardous Agents (live bacteria, DNA, recombinent DNA, viruses, cancer cell lines, or any sort of stem cell line)
•    Personnel- do I know everyone listed as personnel on this protocol?  If someone is new I stalk them down and find out what their credentials are and what training they’ve had.  I work at a small hospital and I know everyone who works in all of the labs.  Larger places will have an employee database I’m sure.

Then over the next month prior to the IACUC meeting, I rip your protocol a new ass.  I get my big red pen and really go through the whole thing.  I review about 7-12 protocols each month. 

When I’m done I send the protocol with my findings to TWO scientists on the IACUC, a primary reviewer and a secondary reviewer.  I also make sure the PI (principal investigator...person doing the experiement) sets up a phone consultation with our veterinarian.  If you don’t consult with the vet, you get knocked out of the next month’s meeting agenda.  It’s mandatory.  When the two reviewers and the vets have read the protocols they return their comments back to me and I compile my comments, the two sets of reviewer comments, and the veterinarian’s comments into a bound book that I disseminate to the IACUC before the monthly meeting.  During the meeting each protocol is introduced by me and then there is an open forum discussion about the project.  I write down everything that is said.  99.9% of the time the protocol is voted approved pending modifications.  The modifications to be made are the recommendations from the committee, the reviewers, and the vet.

Q: What does the IACUC look for when reviewing protocols?

A: The central dogma to an IACUC is the 3 R’s:
•    Reduction-does the PI use the fewest number of animals possible to still have data be statistically significant?  We make the PIs include a power analysis to show how they estimate the number of animals required (we use the variable “n” to denote number of animals used in each test group)
•    Refinement- has the PI refined his protocol to use the most humane procedures?  Has the PI considered use of an in vitro or computer model?  A written justification from the PI is included in every protocol stating why or why not each of the above is met.
•    Replication- Does this experiment unnecessarily duplicate previous research?  Proof of a web search using pubmed or medline must be shown including what search terms were used.  If someone is already doing the experiment, the IACUC will catch it.  I often double check PI’s internet searches for them.
The IACUC benefits greatly from its veterinarian membership.  They often provide the best advice for performing experiments humanely with the appropriate anesthesia (drugs that induce a lack of sensation) and analgesia (drugs that block the perception of pain)

Q: What are the pain categories?

A: The USDA invented a standardized method of categorizing animals based on the level of pain and distress they will experience as a result of the protocol.  If an animal is going to feel pain even for a fraction of a second, you have to be conservative and file your animals in the highest pain category that will be experienced at any point in the experiment:
•    B: Category B is reserved for breeding animals.  They experience no pain or distress induced by humans.  They are there to breed and that’s it.
•    C: Category C is for animals that will feel momentary discomfort that will NOT be treated with pain managing drugs.  The most pain that should be experienced in this category is that of a routine injection or brief restraint or handling
•    D: Category D is for animals that will experience some pain and distress that will completely be monitored and alleviated by anesthesia and analgesic regimens.  In theory, category D animals should perceive no pain
•    E: Category E is for animals that will experience pain or distress and will NOT be given pain managing drugs.  A scientific justification is required for any PI proposing a category E study.  An example of category E studies are studies where they are trying to test the nature of pain, the efficacy of pain drugs, LD50 tests, and any experiement in which the animal will die without intervention (starvation, disease, dehydration, etc.)  Natural animal deaths do not fall into this category (My boss is a geriatrician and sometimes while aging his rats for his studies on aging, the rats would just kick the bucket naturally…) All category E studies have to be reported to the USDA with their written justifications.

Because medical research universities do not often perform LD50 tests, category E studies are rare in the public sector.  Out of almost 3 hundred active protocols I manage, I have only 1 category E study and 1 that the committee was deadlocked about what category the animals should be placed in.

There is an important distinction that research universities and medical research non-profits don’t typically do these toxicity tests or “LD50 tests”.  LD stands for lethal dose.  Every single product you have in your house has been through an LD50 test.  They’re awful; I don’t think I could oversee one myself.  I don’t have the stomach.  They are very necessary though.  If your child drinks a quarter of a bottle of something under the kitchen sink and uou call the poison control center and they say, “Oh shit, I don’t know how much your child’s body can take before she overdoses and dies.  That research hasn’t been done.  She may be okay or she may die.  Who knows?!” I would imagine that is an even more terrifying answer.

  Pharmaceutical companies invent drugs, not doctors.  They have their own very skilled pharmacologists do this.  These private companies are responsible for the manufacturing of a safe drug.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates this process.  If you eat it, drink it, smear it, inhale it, or shove it in to any of your orifices,  the FDA tests it.  You can argue the ethics of testing food, cosmetics, detergents, and all “lifestyle products” on animals but I can’t really field that one.  My focus is on the medical research animal model. 

Okay I’m gonna stop here for now.  I promise I will write more later but I’m cramping and I want to save some energy to write something more light spirited.

Stay tuned for your next installment of Animal Research 101!

New Years Eve is for amateurs

New Years Eve exists exclusively for a minority group of people:  women who have been dating a man for 6-12 months.  Less than that and it's still not that serious, and longer than that, this wouldn't be your first New Years Eve together. 

NYE triggers some sort of mechanism in women that drives this need for this cathartic movie experience that isn't really possible any other time of year.  It's cold, your faces are red and you're buzzed with champagne, and all of a sudden that guy you weren't so sure about turns into the love of your life.  For a second you see marriage and babies and how cute this memory will be in old age.

Then around March you realize that same guy is the lump that's still farting on your couch and you want to die. 

This year I didn't even get myself worked up over making plans.  I was in bed at 10 and completely slept through it.  As I was falling asleep I whispered a soft prayer, "suck it, 2008" and fell asleep smiling.

So far 2009 has been promising.  My boss stormed through my office, ripped one of his framed posters off the wall to take with him and declared he is retiring and "fuck this place".  I can't tell how serious this is yet.  He's prone to hysterics. 

I'm finally regaining some color back into my skin from the great Tennessee alcohol bender.  My liver likes to give me friendly reminders that it's working with me as a favor and can pack up and quit at any time.  Point taken. 

I've been on this japanese food craving kick.  I've been throwing down tons of cash I don't have for sushi.  Last night I felt like that scene from Rosemarry's Baby where she scarfs down the raw meat for the satan child that dwells inside her.  Other than sushi I've been eating total garbage junk food.  I seem to be losing weight though which has me concerned I may have some sort of invasive cancer.  So after a week straight of oreos and raw fish I'm sure my intestines are already having a memorable 2009.