Chapter 15 An Exemplary Animal Care Program; Why Animals Are “Unsung Heroes”
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Description
Dr. Tinkey begins this chapter by outlining what has been accomplished in the Department of Animal Medicine and Surgery under her leadership. She notes that the department was recently given a “glowing external review” and was called “an exemplary care program,” indicating that “we have done a lot of things right.” She says she is most proud of the fact that the department is a “high-functioning team,” despite the fact that veterinarians are passionate, opinionated people who frequently disagree.
Next, to give context for her discussion of why animals are key for cancer research, Dr. Tinkey recalls going to a lecture where she learned that the imperative for modern animal research came from the Nuremberg Trials and discussions of war crimes including experimentation on human beings. Dr. Tinkey concludes that animal use is a “humanitarian principle.”
Next, she talks about the need to use many different species of animals for research. She notes that animals are “powerful research tools” in service of work that will benefit patients. However, she asserts, “they aren’t little test tubes. They are sentient beings.” This sentiment, she says, brings humanity into the research process. She talks about why animals are the “unsung heroes” of research and how they are deserving of respect throughout the research process.
Identifier
TinkeyPT_03_20160624_C15
Publication Date
6-24-2016
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Overview; Overview; Definitions, Explanations, Translations; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Critical Perspectives; Building/Transforming the Institution; Multi-disciplinary Approaches; MD Anderson Culture; Care; On Care; Discovery and Success; Healing, Hope, and the Promise of Research; Faith, Values, Beliefs; Ethics
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What do you feel working together you folks have really accomplished for the animals in the past decade say?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Like we talked earlier, that’s such a difficult question to answer because so many of the pieces, if they’re isolated, maybe they don’t really sound that pivotal. But it’s just the whole thing together. So what I think we’ve accomplished together is -- and like I said, we just came through an external review where they were really glowing. They said, “MD Anderson has an outstanding, exemplary animal care program.” When they give that kind of accolade the only way you can get it is to have a combination of facilities that are really well designed, caging that’s really high quality caging, processes that are working well to deliver veterinary care and the daily husbandry care and the biosecurity for the animals, processes that are facilitating the investigators getting trained and knowing what the procedures are and how do I get my research accomplished with these animals. So it’s really just a reflection of everything. I think that’s what I would have to say. I would have to say that we don’t just have a really well designed animal facility and all our processes are really crazy, or we don’t have a great process but we purchased some really low quality caging and everybody hates it. It’s really that we’ve done a lot of things right. And that’s a reflection of not me, not one individual could do that. I think that’s what I’m most proud of. If you get together a lot of well trained, educated, passionate individuals, by its very nature you have disagreements. Because people feel strongly about things. And they’re educated and they think they know what’s best. And I feel really proud that we have been able to form a high-functioning team that can have these really robust discussions, passionate disagreements, and come to a conclusion. And sometimes that’s my role. My role sometimes is we’re going to call the question. And now we’re going to make a decision. And half the people walk out happy and half the people walk out sad or angry or disappointed. But they come together the next day and say, “Well, this was a decision, now let’s go forward with it.” I think it’s a unique position to be in. So I’m proud of that. Whatever role I played in producing that team, then I’m proud of that.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s cool. Now talk to me about the importance of animals in research. We’ve talked about animals a lot. But focus on that issue of why animals are so key in research, particularly here at MD Anderson.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I was just telling a young veterinarian who was coming to interview for a position this morning. A problem like cancer is so complex because if you think about it, it’s not just a cancer.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Wait one sec while this goes by.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Good, that’ll help me form my thought. That shows up on the tape, huh?
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh yeah. I’m just saying this is something Stacy will want. It always happens. Looks like we’ve got it. So you were saying cancer.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah. Well, if you thought about a cancer cell itself, the cancer cell itself is complex and hard to understand. But it’s not just a cancer cell in your body. It’s the fact that that cancer cell interacts with your normal cells that have to support the cancer cell. And then blood vessels grow to it and provide it with nutrition. And then the cancer cell has to know how to wiggle into the blood vessel and go and metastasize to some other tissue. And the cancer cell evades your immune system. So your normal immune system that kills weird cells somehow doesn’t function well with cancer. So it’s not just that we’re studying cancer cells. We have to study all these other systems that make up the problem of cancer. It’s how is it interacting with your immune system and how is it interacting with the normal stroma around it, and why isn’t your immune system working, and how is it recruiting blood vessels to feed itself, and what are the mechanisms that allow it to metastasize. All of that. So we can do a really lot on computers and we can do a lot with cells growing in dishes in an incubator. But when you look at those kind of interactions, how is the cancer cell interacting in the normal tissues of the body, that’s impossible to do without looking at it in a living system, in a complex whole animal living system. Impossible to do. And I actually educated myself 10 or so years ago. I went to an extremely interesting lecture where I learned -- I wasn’t being reminded. I actually learned that the basis for modern animal research, the basis for the medical profession saying, “You’ve got to try something in an animal before you use it in a human,” came out of the results of World War II and the Nuremberg trials. Because the Nazis did things on people. They did experiments on people just to find out if stuff would work. And that was so horrific that part of the concepts and principles that came out of the Nuremberg trials is you will not do things on a human unless you’ve got animal studies to support your idea, and you’ve got a reasonable idea that this will produce benefit and no harm. Learning that, and now I remember it routinely, when folks protest and say, “Don’t use animals, try this on people, there’s no use to use animals,” I think to myself golly, I wonder if they’re remembering the Nuremberg trials and why this became a humanity principle in the first place. So that’s why the cancer problem needs animal models. Because there’s so much that you simply cannot do if you’re not studying cancer in an animal model. And we spoke a bit last time. If folks have educated themselves well enough that they finally understand and say, “OK, now I understand why you must use animal models. I’ve come to the realization that we can’t progress medical science without using animal models. But why can’t you just do everything in a mouse?” The reality is sometimes the answer is as simple as size. Can’t develop a medical device to go in a human size liver unless you’re modeling that in a human size animal. But that’s the cool thing I love about comparative medicine. The reality is also that some of the biology of one animal lends itself to some sciences and another animal might not. For example mice are great for many many things. But if you are studying a biologic, like some of the new -- what’s the new rheumatoid arthritis one that I see on TV all the time? Can’t remember the name of the drug. But it’s an antibody that actually binds to a receptor in your body to block the arthritis. When you’re dealing with something that precise, the mouse antibody and a human antibody and the receptors are different enough that it’s hard to test a monoclonal antibody in mice, some of the time. Some of the time you simply have to use a primate, because the biological response can’t be modeled in an animal unless it’s that precisely close to a human. So the reasons for the selection of different animal models, there can be a lot of different reasons. But that’s why we have mice and we have rats and we have rabbits and we have pigs and we have primates and we have frogs. And we talked about the zebra fish last time. And the early cell regeneration signals that also function in cancer. So it’s fun to be a veterinarian, it’s fun and pressure. Because when the zebra fish came I said, “I don’t know anything about zebra fish.” So you have to learn about these different animals. But that’s also part of the value of veterinarians. That’s what we do. We’re the only medical professional that learns about more than one animal species. MDs learn about one animal species. Veterinarians learn about a whole bunch of them. So that’s what we do. And our value is to say to our researchers who may only know about humans, “This is how you can model that in a mouse. Or you might want to use a zebra fish for that. Or perhaps you’re really going to need a primate for this particular study.”
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So tell me about the animals, looking from the animals’ perspective. What do they give to this whole process?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, one of the cultural things that I fight -- I don’t have to fight it personally. I’ve got it. But sometimes other folks around us, especially folks from different cultures around the world, they view animals differently. Maybe the value an animal has. Especially an animal that’s not a pet like a mouse. Maybe there’s a different life value associated with that animal. And so I passionately fight the desire maybe or the unconscious tendency some people have to view their animals as tools. Yes, the animal is an animal model, and we’re going to answer a research question. But an animal is not a tool. So the value of the animal model, if you just looked at it as tool, animals are incredibly powerful research tools, because they allow us to watch cellular interactions that we can’t see any other way. But the other value I think it brings is at the end of the road, we’re all focused on bringing something to the patients. And so what our interventions or therapies do to patients, good or bad, needs to be part of our sensitivity. And so that’s the other value I think animals have. They aren’t little test tubes. They’re sentient little beings and so if our researchers know to be sensitive to that, to look at not just their research question but maybe how is this drug or device impacting the whole animal, I think it does help us appreciate what might the impact be when we -- this could be the greatest drug on earth, but if you really feel bad for months afterwards, how is that going to be? What’s the impact on quality of life? Or if you have chronic pain for years afterwards because of a drug, how is that going to impact quality of life? So I just think it brings -- I guess saying it brings humanity into the research process is the wrong word. Because these are nonhuman little creatures. But it does. I think it brings the sensitivity of a being into the process. That’s the good and the bad. That’s the good, and the bad is -- I told you this is a highly emotional job from time to time. So that can be the bad too. That there’s a lot of impact to the veterinarians and animal care staff who care for the animals day in and day out. Because they see those impacts and have to be able to focus on let’s do everything we can for the animals right now and let’s remember that this is for a long term end goal, which is curing cancer.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I was talking to Stacy before our interview, and she mentioned the title of that DVD we were speaking about was Unsung Heroes. So why give that kind of name to the animals that are used in research?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, the most obvious answer is just look at the news every day. If a great new drug is out on the news today and this drug is phenomenal and it will cure diabetes, I can almost guarantee you that there were hundreds and thousands of animals enrolled in basic science and preclinical trials research to get that drug on market, but they will not be in the news story, because nobody wants to talk about that. And so that’s the most obvious answer. No one focuses on the animal research that underpins I would say 99.9% if not all of the drugs and devices and procedures and heart valve replacement, artificial heart, development of insulin, antibiotics. You name it, there were animals there. But they’re certainly not the focus of the story. Which is fine. But that’s part of why I think they named it that. People should realize that their modern quality of life depended on a whole lot of animals who were enrolled in research.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What was the original name of that DVD? Do you remember?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I don’t.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And the second, what was the whole title of it?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I can’t remember honestly. I know it was Unsung Heroes. And there was probably a colon and some more words.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What about the idea of heroes?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, heroes, part of the reason we advocate so passionately for animals is sometimes -- it’s not a joke, but I’ll say with a little bit of heat perhaps sometimes there’s no informed consent when you’re a laboratory rat. So it’s not like we have lines of mice lining up saying, “Hey, I’d like to volunteer for this.” They don’t have a say in this. And so their experience is they’re being enrolled in the research, their ultimate humane euthanasia, so we can find our answers, and their experience throughout the course of the experiment, they are 100% dependent on us. And by and large these little creatures are beautiful, nice, docile little creatures that like us. So I don’t know. So I think hero is anybody who gives their life for a greater cause. And that’s certainly our animals. Their life is going to be given. They’re not volunteering. But still and all, their life is going to be given in the pursuit of finding a cure for cancer. To me that makes them -- and we couldn’t do it without them.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I like the perspective that it shows and the respect that it shows for the life of the animal. I’m reminded how Native Americans would thank an animal that they hunted for giving its life because that animal would be put to an important purpose.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah, very similar. So the animal didn’t volunteer to be used as food. However, it was absolutely essential for the person who was hunting to have that animal.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And out of respect saying, “Thank you for giving your life in this way.” I always thought that was really neat.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
And I like the word you use. Maybe we don’t say the word respect enough. That’s the other thing that I think myself, the veterinarians, the staff constantly do. We remind everybody these animals deserve respect. They didn’t ask to be here. They are here. They deserve respect and the highest level of treatment.
Recommended Citation
Tinkey, Peggy T. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 15 An Exemplary Animal Care Program; Why Animals Are “Unsung Heroes”" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1235.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1235
Conditions Governing Access
Open
