From: mhulsey@hestia.fcs.uga.edu (Martin Hulsey)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: CBS's "60 Minutes" damns PeTA
Date: 26 Jan 93 22:02:01 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.animals
Organization: Dept. Foods & Nutrition, Univ. of GA

In article <1993Jan26.173127.12639@clpd.kodak.com>,
black@che.serum.kodak.com (Robert Black (x37236)) wrote:
> 
>[...]
> 
> Here's a copy of Barnard's letter to Wallace which appeared on AREN 
> this morning:
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for providing this information Bob.

>[...]

>    1.  Considerable  air  time  was  spent  establishing that the cats were
>    anesthetized  when  shot.  This  was never in question. The pain we were
>    concerned  about  was  after  the anesthesia was turned off. At least 33
>    percent  of  the  brain-damaged  cats  survived  their  injuries  and no
>    anesthesia  or  pain  killers were used after wounding.

If whether or not the cats were anesthetized when shot was "never in
question," why did Barnard look so surprised when he was told that PETA's
claims in this regard were false?

Do you have any information as to why this unusual course of treatment was
followed?  Was this protocol approved by the IACUC?  What was the
justification?  Is Barnard omitting something?

>[...]
> 
>    2.  While  the  GAO's  "medical  panel" did make positive comments about
>    the  experiments,  your  report left out the fact that, before they met,
>    they  were  telephoned  and asked to issue a positive report by the head
>    of  a  national  neurological  surgery  organization.

Were any of the "experts" on the second panel pressured in like fashion?

>One  of the panel
>    members   reported   to  you  the  serious  technical  problems  of  the
>    experiments, but you chose to exclude her from the program.

Was she from the same panel?  Why didn't Barnard give her name?

If true, I would consider this a serious omission.

> 
>    3.  Carey  stated  that  he  was on the brink of "showing that this drug
>    would  really  work  when  our  research  funding  was shut off." As you
>    know,  this  is  nonsense.

How does Barnard know this?

>In  Carey's  first  Army  contract,  he  was
>    supposed  to  test  medications but did not do so. According to the GAO,
>    "For  example,  testing  treatment  drugs  was an objective of the first
>    contract,  yet  the  principal  investigator  stated  that no drugs were
>    tested."  (P.37)

If Carey was under the second contract when funding was terminated, is this
relevant?

>While he did start using medications eventually in the
>    second  contract,  the  idea  of  an  imminent  "breakthrough" at LSU is
>    simply a fiction.

How does Barnard know this?

> 
>    4.  Your  program  entirely  omitted  any  discussion  of the scientific
>    fraud  aspects  of  the  case.  Carey's  fraudulent  public claims about
>    being  the  first  to  discover  post-wounding  apnea were omitted, even
>    though  your  staff  saw  him make these false claims on local Louisiana
>    television   and   saw   similar   claims  in  his  published  accounts.

If memory serves, Russell's newspaper article indicated that this was shown
a long time ago (ca. 1890).  It is difficult to search such old (pre-1966)
literature, so I would not accept a charge of fraud if Carey omitted such
an old publication.

>   ... some of his data were beyond the limits of possibility.

Gee Bob, how does GAO determine this?  They must have some top secret
"possibility detector."

>    5.  There  was  almost  no  mention  of  the  fact that there are other,
>    better  methods  of  research  on  brain  injury.

This is not fact, but Barnard's opinion.  Don't you just hate people who
purport their opinion as fact?

>Clinical study of head injury  patients  is  of  far more utility than animal experiments.

Ditto.

>Head
>    injury  can  be  a  terrible  thing,  and  those  conducting  legitimate
>    clinical  research  are  not  well  served by this fanciful portrayal of
>    what, in fact, were poorly controlled and frankly cruel experiments.

Ditto again.  Barnard falsely implies that clinical research is the only
legitimate form of research.

> 
> In  an  interview  with  Dr. Michael DeBakey which I published in 1990, Dr.
> DeBakey  complained  that  Sixty  Minutes  will  not  hesitate to rearrange
> reality.  DeBakey  was  complaining  of  a  Sixty  Minutes program on heart
> surgery,  but  his  comments  would  apply equally well to this most recent
> program:  "And  the worst one was Sixty Minutes. This fellow, Mike Wallace,
> came  down  here  and  spent  a day with me. Never put me on. He completely
> edited  my  remarks out of the program because I told the truth about it...
> When  the  truth  doesn't fit in with their notions of what is presentable,
> they don't include it."

Does anyone else see the similarities between Barnard's arguments and
Russell's?
 
>[...]

--
mhulsey@hestia.fcs.uga.edu (Martin G. Hulsey)
Neuroscience, NRA-ILA, SSIB, NAASO, IASO
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals