Chapter 03: Faith Shapes a Feeling for Animals; Work that Contributes to Human and Animal Health
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Description
In this chapter, Dr. Tinkey talks about her the connection between her religious beliefs and the approach she takes to working with animals.
She begins by noting that she was educated in catholic schools, where she had a very good experience. She now attends a Baptist church and she explains some of the elements of her deep sense of faith. She explains that her feeling that “you’re here for a reason bigger than you” greatly influences her work. She explains that she has a deep respect for life and a commitment to benefit the welfare of animals, though she also has a strong conviction that there is a difference between humans and animals.
Next Dr. Tinkey explains that working with animals in a research setting can be “emotionally tough” for veterinarians, given the experimental procedures a veterinarian must conduct. She talks about how she copes with this and sees her role as making an animal’s life as good as possible. Referring to the Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery, she says, “That’s what we do here.” Dr. Tinkey states that working in veterinary medicine at MD Anderson is her way of contributing to both animal and human health.
Identifier
TinkeyPT_01_20160531_C03
Publication Date
5-31-2016
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 - Character and Personal Philosophy; Personal Background; Faith; MD Anderson Culture; Institutional Mission and Values; The Life and Dedication of Clinicians and Researchers; Personal Reflections, Memories of MD Anderson; Faith, Values, Beliefs
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 about the religious dimension? Was Catholicism important for you personally?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Looking back as an adult -- because right now my husband Dave and I attend a Baptist church for reasons we can get into. But I think the important thing for me was a deep sense of faith. I learned a lot of catechism. You go to catechism. So you learn a lot of rules and that kind of thing when you’re a Catholic. But that’s not what I think made the impression on me. The impression is you’re here for a reason. The reason is something bigger than you. And that’s what you should spend your life pursuing. You should contribute to society for some reason beyond you. And that pulse I think beats in a lot of religious educational environments, that there’s something that you should contribute to beyond what you can do for yourself.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
How does that flow into what you’re doing now?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, that belief and conviction has really been a foundation of my life because as you well know, life takes you in funny times. And you have good times and you have bad times. You have a lot of things that challenge you both professionally and personally. And you need to be able -- for me, I had to have a rock to stand on. This too shall pass. So that I think has been good. And I think it’s made me philosophic. Like I said, everything you do, you’re going to have joys and you’re going to have defeats. You have great days and you have really bad days. And you need to be able to say on a really bad day, “You know what? Tomorrow will be better. This will pass.” Like I said. Or this will make tomorrow look better because today looks a little dark.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What about a spiritual or faith dimension of working with animals as creatures? Is there any connection there at all for you?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah. And so interestingly -- and this may be one of those things, might be controversial, and I may want to come back and edit out. Two things. And I think they seem a little bit contradictory. But just respect for life and respect for all things living, and to give living creatures -- to do things that attempt to benefit their welfare and keep them free from pain and distress and fear. Maybe that’s just a moral code. I don’t think you have to be in a religious school to have that moral code but it was definitely there. But interestingly, the other thing that I think a religious education gave me was a very strong conviction that there is a difference between humans and animals and that God gave animals to people for their benefit. This certainly didn’t give us a right to ever abuse or waste animals. But it did give us a sovereign human right to engage in the animals in our world, to have animals as food, or harvest their wool for clothing, or perform humane animal research in order to find benefits for human health. So I think that’s part of the religious upbringing that I had too.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Very interesting.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I think if I didn’t have that conviction, animal research for a veterinarian can be an emotionally very tough thing.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
How so?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Because when you go to veterinary school -- and I said my thought was that I wanted to be a traditional veterinarian. A veterinarian that got out and went to work practicing on companion animals or farm animals. And the very foundation of that is the assumption I’m going to find sick animals and I’m going to fix them. I’m going to make them better. When you’re doing research, by and large, that is not the script that you follow. In fact by and large you have perfectly normal animals that you make abnormal. You either are testing a drug to try and see where’s the level of toxicity here, or you implant a tumor in an animal that doesn’t have a tumor. Or you create a nerve defect in an animal that doesn’t have a nerve defect. And most of the time at the end of that study, the animal is going to be humanely sacrificed so that you can obtain the tissues and the blood and the samples that you need to say now what happened, what can we learn from this, and what’s our next step so that we can apply this to the humans we’re trying to heal. The humans we’re trying to heal part is the goal, and you really got to keep that in mind. But while you’re going through the process and while you’re the one on the ground interacting with those animals every single day, that can be very emotionally hard. And I don’t want to get all emotional now. But there have been a lot of days that I went home and was just upset. Because of whatever was going on, or because we were doing something that I knew was the right thing, but it didn’t make it an easy thing. And so having the conviction that there’s somebody that we’re going to help, somebody’s mom or dad or sister or brother or beloved grandmother, somebody we are going to help from the information we’re getting here. That’s the point. And my role is to do everything I possibly can to make that animal’s life as good as it can possibly be while we’re still achieving that research outcome. Basically that’s it in a nutshell. That’s what we do here. That’s what we do. And we do an extremely good job and I’m proud of that. And would I do it again? Yes, I absolutely would do it again, because I have lunches with our new employees when we hire somebody, because we’re a big department, and sometimes I don’t see people again, so I always try and have lunch with our new employees, and one of the things that I tell people is I’m a veterinarian, I’m doing animal research, and a lot of people are put off by that, oh, how can you do that. And I say to people I was in practice for 10 years before I came to MD Anderson, from 1983 to 1993. I was doing what I thought I would do. I was in private veterinary practice working on companion animals, dogs and cats mainly. And I got a huge amount of personal and professional fulfillment from being a good veterinarian, and taking sick animals and restoring them to health, and giving them back to the happy family. But even with that huge level of personal fulfillment and great feeling I got from that, and after coming here realizing that this can be really a hard deal for a veterinarian, it’s the only job that I could think of -- because after I’d been here a year I was really thinking about ooh, I don’t know if I can do this. It’s the only job I could think of where I realized that through my veterinary activities I can contribute significantly to both human and animal health. I can make a difference to those animals that are enrolled in research projects. I can advocate for them. I can push every day to make sure that their life is as good as it can possibly be. Acknowledging that sometimes they’re undergoing very rigorous studies, I can make it as good as it can possibly be. But the outcome of that is that somebody might get cured. Somebody might graduate from high school who’s not going to graduate. Somebody’s dad is going to be able to walk them down the aisle and maybe they wouldn’t have been able to do that otherwise. And I thought wow, this is such a privilege for a veterinarian, to be able to do both of those things. Where else could I do both of those things? And way back in 1994 I became convinced that there was no other job I could do that would allow me to contribute to the world in both of those fashions as powerfully as I could if I stayed here at MD Anderson. And so that’s why I’m still here.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting. Yeah. Well, I’m glad we talked about that. I know it’s upsetting to talk about these big issues. But I think it’s really a core issue. I think people who’ve never confronted some of these situations, they don’t understand how emotionally complicated it can be to do certain kinds of jobs.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I agree. And life is easier when it’s black-and-white. You’re right or you’re wrong. And I think a lot of people brush animal research into the oh, that’s terrible, I would never do that bucket. But that’s only because they really haven’t had the courage to look at it deeply.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And realize what the consequences can be if you decide not to. It’s easy to be cavalier about it when you’ve never been in the situation.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Exactly. And that’s part of why I’m proud really of myself, and I’m proud of all the people I work with here in this department, because every single day they have skin in the game.
Recommended Citation
Tinkey, Peggy T. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 03: Faith Shapes a Feeling for Animals; Work that Contributes to Human and Animal Health" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1223.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1223
Conditions Governing Access
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