Chapter 11: Managing Animals, Research, and Disasters
Files
Description
In this Chapter, Dr. Satterfield reviews his administrative roles. He describes his responsibilities as Chief of Livestock and Land Management (1986 – present), noting he has been primarily involved with caring for the Center’s sheep and goats, including providing surgical and radiology services, training technicians, and organizing programs that provide the State with these animals’ blood products. He gives an overview of the Center’s land holdings of 380 acres, most of which is pasturage. He talks briefly a Master Plan drawn up in 2004 and CIPRIT grants that have enabled the Center to serve as a research resource for drug development.
Next Dr. Satterfield describes his work with the Center’s chimpanzee program. He first explains that chimpanzees are difficult to maintain because they are so intelligent, strong, and social –though they do not necessarily coexist harmoniously. The Center has a Ph.D. behavioral psychologist on staff to organize social groupings. Each chimpanzee also has a name, a medical history and a behavioral profile so the animals can be placed in healthy groupings. In his role on the External Advisory Committee (2006 – ’08) Dr. Satterfield explored funding and research opportunities from outside MD Anderson, including NIH studies, and studies of aging, diabetes, and cardiac disease. His Internal Advisory Role (2007) involved reviewing programs, chimpanzee health, and the facilities. Dr. Satterfield tells a dramatic and moving story about a male chimpanzee [Tony] who escaped and was ultimately shot by an off-duty University of Texas police officer. Dr. Satterfield is clearly still upset by this memory, and he notes this was “a dark period in our history.” It also resulted in the Keeling Center offering raining to the UTPD for chimpanzee escapes, 99% of which occur through human error: Dr. Satterfield notes that there has been no problem in the last 4-5 years.
Identifier
SatterfieldWC_02_20120725_C11
Publication Date
7-25-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
William C. Satterfield, DVM, Oral History Interview, July 25, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - The Administrator Building/Transforming the Institution Devices, Drugs, Procedures Professional Practice The Professional at Work Human Stories
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Because I had— I wanted to make sure that we did talk in more detail about some of the administrative roles and ways in which you've contributed to the development of the center itself. Would that be okay?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Sure.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Now, since 1986 you've been chief of the livestock and land management arm of the Department of Veterinary Sciences, and I really have no idea what that might mean.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Well, that's just—primarily what that means is that all of the projects involving large animals, which for the most part are sheep and goats, so those have been areas that I've been responsible for.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And what does that involve, exactly?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Surgery, surgical support, radiology, technician training, technician support, instrumentation—all of the things that are going to—having a program that we can utilize sheep and goats. In some cases—and there's also a biologics program that we provide blood products to the state laboratory for encephalitis testing—those sorts of things. I don't physically, personally get involved in it. I have technicians that carry out those functions, but if there's a problem with those animals that they need healthcare, then I'm the one that's responsible for doing that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I see. What about the land management piece of that?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Land management is kind of a—I have to say, I haven't done anything with that. We've got folks down there that do take care of the pastures, and we contract out hay production here to outside people. That's kind of the way that goes. If there's a problem with it, they come see me. Otherwise, I don't get involved, and I let them kind of do their thing.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, one of the main things is your involvement with the chimpanzee biomedical—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
One of the things I did do with land management was I was able to— We had a little chunk of land over here on our—one of our borders—that was about eleven acres that had a—that was privately owned, and the folks that owned it moved to a mobile home and had a power pole set. I had a security and a number of concerns with having someone on our perimeter of our chimpanzee colony that could either cause problems to us or we could be a problem for them, and I was able to convince the system, as well as MD Anderson, that we would acquire— We acquired that land back around 2002 or something like that. So we were able to pick up eleven acres and then so we have—all around us is—we don't have any people abutting us. Because of our primate colonies, we need to have, like I say, secure borders here.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What's the total size of the facility?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I think it's right at the 380-some acres, but we only occupy, building-wise— We're only on about fifteen percent of it or so. The rest of it is used for grazing and hay production.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And that's—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
And there's a master plan. There was a master plan developed back in 2004 that—where we are capable—we have a lot of opportunity for growth here.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What are the plans for growth?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
We'll grow as—the plans for growth are going to be according to what the current director wants to do, and that's Dr. Abee. And I'm sure it'll happen, depending on the programs that come. They've applied to some of the cancer—that CPRIT, that legislature provided CPRIT grants. They've applied for CPRIT grants to be a state resource for drug development, and should that be granted or that grant be given a favorable rating, that would increase our—we'd probably have facilities come along with that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Would you like to tell me more now about your role with the chimpanzees because you said you were part of an internal and external steering committee and then were chief—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah, those were—we did— One of the grants we had, we had an external advisory committee. We recruited a number of folks to come in and help us as far as giving us external review of our program, our chimpanzee program. And we also look at that internally as well as on a regular basis.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, it may seem really—I mean—obvious, but just—maybe not. Why are chimpanzees so labor intensive to maintain?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
They are a—It's a great ape. They're intelligent. They have strength—individually, the strength of half a dozen guys. They live in social groups. Because of their intellect, we have a department or we have a section of behavior. We have a PhD behaviorist or PhD psychologist, actually. They have a behaviorist that works out there full-time. All of these animals have their name. They have a complete medical history. We have a complete behavioral profile on each one. We try to construct the groups in a manner that they can all live together harmoniously but chimpanzees are not a harmonious; it's not a harmonious species. They have a constant hierarchal struggle and so we have to— When we take an animal out for a study, then we have to figure out what it's going to—how it's going to impact the group as well as how that individual animal will handle the study. External advisory committees—they would look at what kind of opportunities—would help us understand what kind of opportunities were available outside of here in order to—that we could capitalize on using the model in a responsible way.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
These would be studies that other people would ask you to do.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Right. It would be either National Institutes of Health, aging—I mean—all of our animals are getting older, so it would be an aging study. We have a couple animals with diabetes, so diabetes-type programs or studies that we could do some basic research in some of those areas. Cardiac—there's a lot of opportunities. There's so much to do and so little time, I guess is the way to put that. And so the internal advisory committee would kind of review our program—our health programs, our geriatric programs, our husbandry program, facilities, what kind of things we have to do as far as there is always facility work that has to be accomplished with these animals. We've got good facilities, but they are hard on them. And we try to— We constantly try to improve our facilities as well for the animals.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What kind of improvements have you made in the facilities over here?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Well, I showed you—the Primadomes have—were designed here and by Dr. Keeling and—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, I didn't realize that.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Every time one of those is built or sold, then MD Anderson gets some royalty from that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That's cool. Now what—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
That's a patented design.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What's the logic of the Primadomes? You know, what's their purpose?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It's this outdoor exercise facility that we can socially house animals in that they can take advantage of vertical as well as horizontal parts of that. We put structures in them. I'll take you around and we'll see them but— In fact, we probably need to break and go do that pretty soon. But those are—and they're secure. The animals are secure in those, so I won't have to worry about anybody leaving the facilities. The other compounds, they don't have a top on them, but the sides are fourteen feet tall, and they have a—the perimeter has about a thirty to forty-five-degree overhang—three-foot overhang—so that they're not— They can't get out of there, but that wouldn't say they're totally escape-proof. We've had animals be accidentally released from those in the past, and currently we have a fence around the facility that is non-climbable, so security is pretty, pretty tight out there. We don't want animals out. We did have one animal escape several years ago, and that ended up very tragically. A police officer inserted himself in the capture scene and shot the animal.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That's really unfortunate.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yep. That was extremely unfortunate. That was—and it was also unnecessary. Just haven't said that. It was— He felt that—in his defense, he felt that there was an imminent threat to—even out there in the brush—there was an imminent threat to public safety. And so that's what he was acting—that's what he acted on.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And how did you see it?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
We weren't anywhere close to any houses or habitation. We were in a pasture, and this animal was trying to get to the brush to safety, and this guy was asked to—not to get involved. In so doing, he actually endangered a number of employees, including myself, by—because we were in the line of fire when he shot the animal fourteen times.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Fourteen times. And we tried— We brought him over here, and we immediately recovered him, took him to surgery, and couldn't—couldn't do anything. Beyond help.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
If the chimpanzee had not been shot, what would've been your process for capturing him?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
We had a capture team there with tranquilizers.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, okay. Yeah.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
And we would've— We would've tranquilized him within thirty minutes, and we would've had him tranquilized and back in the facility. We've had a couple animals out before, and they want to get back in. They don't like being out. It was a— It affected everybody here. It was a pretty dark, dark period in our history. A big investigation occurred after that, and we had lots of people from Houston come up. Of course, the police were—UTPD [University of Texas Police Department] was heavily involved in it since it involved their people, and it made all the papers. We had lots of news people out here.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And what year was this?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It was '06—something like '06—'06 or '07, somewhere in there.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Would you mind if I pause the recorder just for a moment?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Go ahead. [The recorder is paused.]
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Let me just hit—we're recording again, and Dr. Satterfield is talking about training that he does with the UTPD.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah, I don't actually train UTPD people, but our colony manager, and with my encouragement as well as Dr. Abee's encouragement, we work with every UTPD person that comes in. We have a procedure that every new person here gets trained on chimp escapes so that there's expectation of what their role is should a chimpanzee accidentally be released. Ninety percent or ninety-nine percent of the chimpanzee releases are human error. Somebody didn't close a door, didn't put a lock on. We haven't had any problems in the last four or five years, but prior to that, there were some issues, but we have— Going back to what I started out to say was that we have a lot of cooperation from UTPD now since that tragic accident with that animal that had to be, I guess, shot.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, despite the fact that the officer in question was not censured in any way, do you think the message got through to the people at UTPD that they needed to change their attitude a bit?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It did and they have been very receptive to working—for the most part, they have been very receptive. We've got leadership here that we meet with regularly and their role—protect public safety—and our role is really not—they're different worlds. So we're talking to them, and they're talking to us, and so we're able to develop good communications and get a good line of authority, a good line of expectations on what happens in these emergencies. And that's really what we want to understand is what happens in an emergency. If it's a person that's hurt, if it's an animal that escapes, what levels do we—? How do we handle that? We have a whole SOP on escapes.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
SOP?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Standard Operating Procedure for escapes and everybody gets trained on that. Whether we need it or not, we train on it, because it's just like learning CPR. You need to know what your role is and how to do it.
Recommended Citation
Satterfield, William C. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 11: Managing Animals, Research, and Disasters" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1513.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1513
Conditions Governing Access
Open
