Chapter 12: Roles that Protect Animals and the Institution
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Description
In this Chapter, Dr. Satterfield notes that his goal in working with the chimpanzees was to understand autoimmune responses and to advance the understanding of chimpanzees as a species. The care of this aging colony, however, has taken on a life of its own. The United States is the only country left in the world that maintains research colonies of chimpanzees. He notes that other countries outsource their research on great apes to the U.S. so they can claim that they do not experiment on animals. Dr. Satterfield notes that the Keeling Center has been under pressure from animal rights extremists, who “data mine” –request vast amounts of information under the Public Information Act in order to disrupt the Center’s operations. Dr. Satterfield underscores that great apes all over the world are so threatened that there may not be wild communities in a few generations. The colonies in captivity are irreplaceable. He believes that the NIH’s ban on breeding the colonies is shortsighted and indicates that it has submitted to public pressure.
Dr. Satterfield then talks about his work on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (2005 – present). He notes his work protecting MD Anderson by ensuring that principal investigators meet FDA guidelines. He explains that this committee has enabled him to meet great scientists and develop productive collaborations. With budget cuts, he notes, the committee now meets via tele-conference, and this cost saving measure has hurt the collegial connection.
Next Dr. Satterfield touches on his work with the Pharmaceutical Development Center Steering Committee (2003), his role as the Center’s licensed Controlled Drug Officer, and his work as the Center’s representative for the Freedom on Information Act. He took on this role in response to data mining by animal rights activists. He is responsible for reviewing all documents requested to determine what information is proprietary and can be protected by MD Anderson. He then talks briefly about his role as Deputy Director under Dr. Keeling and his role as Ad Interim Chair after Dr. Keeling’s death (2003). He notes that he was a candidate for Director, but was glad when Dr. Christian Abee took the position, as we has glad not to move fully into administration.
Identifier
SatterfieldWC_02_20120725_C12
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 Overview Definitions, Explanations, Translations MD Anderson and Government Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research The Researcher Career and Accomplishments
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I'm aware that it's about ten after 10:00, and I just want to check with you about timing because I do have other things I wanted to cover but I don't want to—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Let's go ahead and cover those and then we can go. I want you to have a tour, too, so leave time—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Yeah. I'd love to do that. Did you say what you felt you wanted to about the chimpanzee program? I mean, because I was wondering when you came here and got involved what your goals were with the chimps. I don't know—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Well, when I first came here, my goals with the chimps was to try to understand the pathogenesis and the origin of human immunodeficiency virus, but that changed over the years to advancing human health and advancing the understanding of the chimpanzees and caring for chimpanzees as well as some of our other primates. But we have a highly specialized team to care for them, and that's really taken on a life of itself in that my role in the medical care of this aging colony has become really paramount.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Are there other colonies like this elsewhere?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yes. There are several other colonies. There are three to four other colonies in this country, and we're unique. We're the only country left in the world that has research chimpanzees. All the other countries have hypocritically, I have to say, advisedly have decided that they don't want to do primate research, but they outsource it to the United States. So they have given themselves a clean bill of health politically that they don't do primate research, but they need it. Human health needs it. So we have people from Denmark, Italy, other countries, numerous countries, South Korea, other places that come to us and these other facilities to have studies done.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
San Antonio has a colony. New Iberia—the University of Louisiana at New Iberia—has a colony. There is a colony at Yerkes, of course. Those are the last remaining research colonies, and the animal rights—animal extremists—are going after— They're not animal rights people. They're animal extremists. They're going after all of these to see if they can take all of these chimpanzees out of research, move them to sanctuaries where they will have poor health care, a reduced health care. But because the government owns these animals, they'll continue to receive government subsidies to care for the animals, but they won't have facilities. They'll have to build facilities. There's a bill before Congress right now that's called the Chimpanzee Health Care Savings thing. And there's no savings in it at all. That's a misnomer.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Have you had any issues with extremists interacting—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah, they harass us through—I say they harass us through trying to data mine. They ask for thousands and thousands of pages of animal healthcare records. And they're obviously looking for anything that they can use to criticize our care of the animals. But as far as what we are able to do with—what we have done with chimpanzees in captivity, we've done a lot with it, and as a matter of fact, most of the enrichment and care of animals that is being incorporated into the sanctuaries was developed in the research facilities. They just basically copied us in almost every aspect of care. Some that haven't need to because there are a lot of places that are not—they're not inspected. Nobody knows what goes on there. They're behind closed doors. They say research is always behind closed doors. We're pretty open. Those places are the ones behind closed doors. They're not open to the public. They're not open to inspection. Nobody looks at them.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything that you wish you had achieved working with the chimps and their—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I would've liked to have achieved a vaccine for hepatitis C, a preventive vaccine, a prophylactic vaccine for hepatitis C. I would like to have been able to demonstrate an effective AIDS vaccine. I would've hoped that we would've had one by now, but we don't. Those are things that I would've liked to have done. I would have liked to have been able to come up with a better means of developing bone implants. Otologists are—tissue-engineered bone. I think those are achievable goals. It's just that I don't have enough time.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
When are you retiring?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
At the end of August.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yes. This month. I'm in my twenty-ninth year, so—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It's time.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I've been here long enough. There are a lot of bright people coming up to take my place, so I'm sure that there will be a lot of neat things happening in the future and hopefully— One of the things I would like to have seen is that the National Institutes of Health would've seen the value in keeping a more viable colony of chimpanzees for a research resource. I think it's been very short-sighted that they haven't done that. The animals, great apes in general—the gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzee in the wild have been under a tremendous amount of ecological pressure from habitat destruction, bush meat, and just diseases introduced from indigenous people and tourists that have taken a real toll on their populations. There might not even be wild populations within a couple of generations left in the wild. And so these animals represent a lot of—well, they're just irreplaceable, and the fact that we're not maintaining these populations as viable populations is just, in my view, in my opinion, extremely short-sighted.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And you think they're caving to political pressure, basically?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Absolutely. Absolutely. NIH is influenced by Congress, and Congress is influenced by these—all of these people who I've described as scientifically illiterate who care for these animals, but they don't care for them enough to see the value in maintaining them. Yeah, we use a few of them for pretty safe studies, to get pretty valuable information, but it's not— We're not abusing these animals at all.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Would you like to tell me about your role with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Briefly, that is mandated by the Animal Welfare Act, and I came on that committee after Dr. Keeling had been on it for a little bit back in the '90s, and I chaired that committee. Mary Jane was one of my excellent members of that committee. I really appreciated—got to work with her. It gave me insights into the research that was going on at Anderson.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And this is Mary Jane Schier?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Mary Jane Schier, yep. And we worked with a lot of PIs, and it's an important committee. I know that a lot of people feel like it doesn't really help them a lot, but it does protect the institution.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything you learned from working on that committee that—because it was maybe in a different relationship—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Well, I learned about a lot of really good scientists that are at MD Anderson, and I developed a lot of collaborations, kind of, through that committee, seeing what kind of work was going on. So being out here in Bastrop, 150 miles removed from the main institution, it was very beneficial for us to be there. Now lately I have to say that when they went through this financial problem a couple years ago, they told us we didn't have any support for travel down there anymore, so we've been attending by teleconference. It does remove us a little bit from that committee and the interaction of the other members of the committee, so I think that was probably a cost savings that we can do a lot of things remotely and so forth, but there is a cost to that, too, from our perspective. From my perspective, there's a cost to that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yep, breaking up networks.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah. It does break up the networks. It really limits the ability to develop networks, and that's a great way to put that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What about your involvement in the Pharmaceutical Development Center Steering Committee? And I think you've been involved with that since 2007? Is that correct?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Actually, I went on that committee back in 2003.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, okay.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
But that was one of the committees—the Pharmaceutical Development Center worked with investigators to develop intellectual property and we tried to— Being a member of that committee, we worked with the folks in that center to—Mary Jane Johansen and Tim Madden, who were the principals in the Pharmaceutical Development Center—to try to facilitate the translational medicine. That's all I did on that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I was a member and I tried to help them with that, so—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, you had mentioned some other roles that you served. You said you also worked as a controlled drug officer. What does that mean?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
That is a DEA—the Drug Enforcement Agency—role because we use lots of drugs up here that are controlled by the Department of Public Safety in Texas as well as the department of narcotics or DEA—Drug Enforcement Agency. And we have to inventory— I have a license in Texas. I have to— As the controlled drug officer, then I'm responsible for everything that comes in here, how it's used, how it's disposed of, recording of it, and then DEA will audit us on that. And we have to have a complete record of everything because of potential for diversion. And we have had a couple of—a couple of times we had some diversion occur or attempted diversion occur, so—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Really?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It's a problem in hospitals, and it's a problem in veterinary organizations as well.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow. But you said it was averted, so you caught it?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
For the most part, yeah. We caught it. We had one person try to order stuff from Houston and then catch the truck when it came here, so we stopped that. We were able to find out about that and stop it. That was quite a few years ago, in case DEA is listening.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So you're a detective in addition to being everything else.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Geez.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What about— I notice that fairly recently—I'm not sure—you have a role in the Freedom of Information Act and the Texas Public Information Act, and you work with MD Anderson Legal. What is that about?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah, and I alluded to that earlier. The animal extremists are trying to data mine us by sending these letters to request everything that we've ever done since the beginning of time. And our legal department—Laurel Hyle is the lawyer at Anderson that I've worked with, collaborated with—has to file appeals through the Texas Attorney General's office, and if they do it through NIH, then we have to work with NIH FOA office, the Freedom of Information Act. The theory behind, or the rationale behind, the Public Information Act in Texas and the Freedom of Information Act nationally is so that people can find out what their government's doing. Animal extremists are not trying to find out what we are doing. They just want to try to be—obstruct any kind of work with animals. They're trying to be obstructionists. In some cases, they probably use it for fundraising as well.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Your role in this was—was largely because—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah. My role in it is to review everything that we're asked to release for proprietary information, for anything that we can legally protect. My role is to try to protect this department and this institution as much as possible from the people who do not mean us well at all.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Your role was established in this way largely in response to the extremists, not for—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yes.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. That's—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow. That's really something. Are there any other roles that you served in in an administrative capacity that you'd like to tell me about—things that you had special goals for—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Well, I served as the deputy director with—under Dr. Keeling, and so when he was— I represented the department, and I represented him any time he couldn't represent the department. And then following his tragic death in '03, I became the ad interim chair and was a candidate for chair. I guess I was thankful that Dr. Abee was successful in becoming the chair because I wanted— After being the deputy chair for two years, I missed being in the clinics. I missed being able to do collaborative work with the investigators and doing all of the administrative work that it required of the administrator of this department. I mean, it was interesting, and it was challenging, but it just wasn't the medical work and the science work that I had enjoyed doing previously. At this point in my life, I've done about everything that I could do here at this time, and I think I've accomplished my goals far more than I thought I would when I first came.
Recommended Citation
Satterfield, William C. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 12: Roles that Protect Animals and the Institution" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1514.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1514
Conditions Governing Access
Open
