Chapter 08: A Brief History of Animal Medicine at MD Anderson
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Description
In this chapter, Dr. Tinkey sketches the history of animal medicine at MD Anderson. She explains that the first president, R. Lee Clark, saw the value of having a veterinarian on staff and hired the first vet, Dr. John Jardine, in the sixties or seventies before a department of veterinary medicine had been established. She says she believes the department was founded in the seventies, with Dr. Cliff Stevens hired as the first pathologist.
Now, she notes, there are two veterinary departments as well as the primate center at the Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research. She explains that it was unusual for a cancer hospital to have a chimpanzee research colony and that this took vision. Dr. Tinkey sketches administrative reorganizations in veterinary medicine.
Identifier
TinkeyPT_02_20160607_C08
Publication Date
6-7-2016
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 University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - An Institutional Unit; Discovery and Success; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; MD Anderson History
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:
OK, so we’re starting to have a conversation, so we’re putting on the recorder now. So I’m Tacey Ann Rosolowski. And it is about two minutes after 3:00 on June 7th, 2016. And I am back today for my second session with Dr. Peggy Tinkey in the Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. OK, good, I got it right. So you were starting to say that there were all these urban legends about the origin of the department. So let me hand it back to you.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, what I guess I meant to say was I think it’d be very interesting for your oral history to get some history on the very beginnings of the Veterinary Department here at MD Anderson. But what I tell you might not be accurate. Maybe the term urban legend. Just because I probably didn’t pay enough attention when I first came here. I remember hearing some stories from my predecessor who’s Dr. Ken Gray and from his predecessor who’s Dr. John Jardine about just how the department started in the first place. And I can relay to you what my remembrances are with the disclaimer this could be very super inaccurate and it would be great if you could get an interview with Dr. Gray because he’s a generation before me. He was actually hired by John Jardine and I think he could give you some really good stories about the very early days of the department. But as I was saying, I believe the first veterinarian who was hired here at MD Anderson, and golly, that was probably maybe in the -- I’m going to say maybe the late ’60s is too early, but late ’60s to mid ’70s sometime -- was John Jardine. From our conversation last time you remember that while animal research is extremely heavily regulated and heavily overseen nowadays, it wasn’t the case at all. Prior to 1985 there was no requirement for an institutional animal care and use committee. So any proposal to do research on animals didn’t even have to go to a committee for review prior to 1985. So you can think back in the ’60s and ’70s. There was not much oversight at all. There was no requirement for an institution to have a veterinarian if they were doing animal work.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now Dr. Jardine was hired by…?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
R. Lee Clark, I believe. And this is where the fact checking really needs to get vigorous because again this could all be wrong. But what I remember of the story is Dr. Clark was a bit ahead of his time perhaps in his thinking because they were doing research using dogs. I wish I could tell you for sure what research that was. I think it was on bone marrow transplantation research. But I’m not sure. But they were doing research on dogs. And progressive for him, let’s say that this might have been in the early ’70s, he said, “Well, golly. If we’re doing research on dogs maybe we ought to have a veterinarian as a member of the team.” And it was in that context I believe that Dr. Jardine was hired. And when Dr. Jardine was hired there was no Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. He was just hired on, and I don’t even know how they hired him at that time. But again it was Dr. Clark saying, “I think as a member of our research team we ought to have a veterinarian because golly, none of us were trained in the care of dogs, so maybe we ought to have a veterinarian.” And it went from there. I believe that Dr. Clark through Dr. Jardine saw the wisdom of having a veterinarian on board when physicians and other medical professionals were using animals in research. So someone who was specifically trained in the care and use and medical care of animals. And from that got to the notion that -- I’m speculating now, but golly, this is a medical professional like the other medical professionals here, and this ought to be a Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery that oversees the use of all the animals, not just a member of my own lab with my own research team because I’m using dogs. So I think that was the origin of the department and it went from there.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So the department was founded in the ’70s perhaps you think?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, I think. And I wish I knew my history better. I apologize that I don’t. And the reason I’m thinking that is because I believe Dr. Gray, who was my predecessor as department chair, was hired by Dr. Jardine in 1979. And Dr. Jardine had already been here for a while. So that’s why my speculation is it was somewhere in the late ’60s or early ’70s that Dr. Jardine was hired, and then he hired Dr. Gray, and he also hired the first veterinary pathologist, Dr. Cliff Stephens, who was hired in 1980. And there was already a department by that time of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. And I’m a little shaky on the history here too. And Dr. Gray will really fill you in, because right now today there are two veterinary departments. There’s this one here on the Houston campus and there’s the Department of Veterinary Sciences which is also named the Keeling Center, which is a very large primate resource that’s out near Bastrop, Texas. Well, at one period of time, and I believe this is when Dr. Jardine was here, they were actually together. That was one department, Dr. Jardine’s department oversaw both of those animal resources, the one here in Houston and the one in Bastrop. And I believe it was also Dr. Jardine who hired Mike Keeling, who was the first veterinary director if you will at the Keeling Center, at the primate resource. And I don’t know if it was Mike’s idea that MD Anderson would benefit from a chimpanzee colony. I think I heard someone say that R. Lee Clark really felt like there was a potential for advancing cancer research if we had chimpanzees. But however that happened, it’s unusual for a cancer center to have a research colony of chimpanzee, but MD Anderson in fact does and still does today. And that was because of this vision that might have been a shared vision between R. Lee Clark, John Jardine, and Mike Keeling.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Very interesting. Wow.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
As time went on the departments obviously separated. And I believe that they separated at or about the time that Dr. Jardine stepped down as chairman of the department. And that would have been about in I’m going to say ’89 or ’90. And at the time he did that he saw fit to separate -- I think it was called the Division of Veterinary Medicine at the time. And he separated it into two departments. Mike Keeling became the chair of the Department of Veterinary Science and Ken Gray ultimately became the chair of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. Like I said my memory is a little fuzzy. But some of this I got because back in 1993 when Ken Gray was the department chair at that time, the department at that time was a single animal facility that was located here on the Main Campus. We’ve expanded obviously since then. And we have two animal facilities on the South Campus, this one on the North Campus. But there was a single animal facility here on the Main Campus. And when I was hired it was because -- I think I told you Kian Ang had gotten a very large radiobiology grant and they actually had over 100 rhesus monkeys and really just needed more clinical veterinary care. And I was a practitioner and they hired me to come in. And so when I first arrived in 1993 the department was much smaller. It was in the older building. And long story short, Ken didn’t have an office for me. So he put me into a shared office, and my officemate was Dr. Jardine.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
How interesting.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Dr. Jardine was a long retired chair at that time, but he had a postretirement appointment and he came in a couple of days a week. And mainly it was for I’m going to say consultation, because Dr. Jardine was severely affected with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and so he drove around a little cart. So he was mobility-impaired. So he mainly drove around a cart, gave us advice, and told us stories. But I got regaled by a lot of stories because he was my officemate for a year.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s funny, that’s very funny. Well, thanks for sketching the history of the department. And I totally appreciate the caveats on that. That’s fine. And it’s a great lead. I’m very much hoping to be able to interview Dr. Gray. Thanks for sending along his contact. I’ll definitely be contacting him.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
That’s going to be very interesting. In fact I’m going to listen to the oral history after you do it. I’m sure even though I worked with him for years I’m going to hear things that I think either oh gosh, I’m glad I remembered that or gosh, I never heard that before.
Recommended Citation
Tinkey, Peggy T. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 08: A Brief History of Animal Medicine at MD Anderson" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1228.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1228
Conditions Governing Access
Open
