Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS)

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Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS)

SHAC: Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty

Inside HLS

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THE CATALOGUE OF CRUELTY THAT IS HUNTINGDON LIFE SCIENCES

The following examples of cruelty and abuse are taken from the diaries of Michele Rokke, who was told on her first day of work at the New Jersey premises of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) that 'no animal ever leaves here [HLS] alive'.

Note:-

(i)When there is reference to animals being 'sacrificed', this refers to the animal(s) being killed.

(ii)'Obbed', 'Obbing' or 'Ob' which frequently occur in the diary refer to 'Observed', 'Observing' or 'Observe'.

9/22/96 Sunday HLS

In room 906, Colgate Palmolive study 95-3278, I told Dilip two of the females have ear- tags that have the numbers chewed off. He showed me their USDA numbers are on a chart on the clipboard in each room. He told me to check the tattoo in the dog's ear and match it with the chart. The dog we were checking, number 1555 was all wriggly and excited about being out on the floor with two people looking at her and was jumping all around. Dilip hit her in the face and checked the tattoo.

9/25/95 Wednesday HLS

Irene and Brian were each drawing blood from dogs in the hall. I watched Irene stick the needle in the dog's neck and jab and fish around repeatedly - sticking the dog about eight times. She withdrew the needle and repeated the procedure. After five more jabs she asked Brian if he wanted to switch dogs. Brian was having the same problem with the dog he was trying to draw blood from.

9/26/96 Thursday HLS

In room 916 - study 3309, the dogs are very hyper. They act like they've never been out of the cage before. Their nails are very long and need to be trimmed.

In room 917 dog #1034's ear is infected where the ear-tag was put on. It's oozing green pus and blood and is covered with big scabs that partially obscure the ear-tag. Dog #1062 is emaciated. His ribs are clearly visible as is his backbone.

In the computer room, Bob from Rodent toxicology was telling Kevin about the rats in his study. Bob said most of the rats can no longer use their back legs because the test material makes their blood so thick it doesn't reach the extremities. He said they lose use of their back legs, then they urinate blood and then they die. Their kidneys shut down as they cannot handle it.

Kevin said he was told that the blood would start to collect in the joints because it was thick and it would probably cause a lot of dislocations. Kevin said they called Terry, the vet, to look at one of the dogs in 3318 after dosing. He was lying with his head up against his food bowl on his back gasping for air. They requested euthanasia and Terry adamantly said no she had one like that before that recovered. Kevin questioned if it had been THIS bad. The dog was left in that condition. Bob asked if he was pissing blood yet - that's what happens to all of theirs right before they die.

In room 921 dog number 3693 caught her ear tag on the feeder. I heard her crying and screaming. When I got to her cage I saw part of her ear-tag was caught in the shelf that holds the food bowl.

Kathy asked me to help her capture an escaped primate in room 956. She said she had tried to catch him and had gotten very frustrated so she thought she better ask for help before she hurt him [on purpose]. I held a squeegee to keep him from running away and Kathy slipped the catchpole around his waist. I was surprised when she cinched it up tight - I thought she would cut him clean through with the pressure. The primate was so afraid he urinated.

She walked him to his cage with that around his waist and as he entered the cage he grabbed hold of the bars and wouldn't let go. She pulled and yanked on the catchpole.

10/2/96 Wednesday HLS

The cages are supposed to be changed every two weeks. The cages in room 917 are very dirty. There is a heavy slimy brown coating on a lot of the doors and throughout each cage (on the walls etc.) Since these dogs are not actively in a study they receive substandard ministration and care.

Henry and I cleaned part of 904 together as I was hosing cages I saw him pick a dog up off the floor by his front leg and toss him in a cage. Henry took one of three beagles out of the exercise cage and when he tried to close the cage door one of the dogs tried to get out. He repeatedly slammed the cage door on the dog's head (a total of four slams) before finally getting the door closed.

Perhaps one time could be considered an accident but I watched him deliberately slam the door over and over again as if he were trying to teach the dog a lesson about rushing out of the cage.

10/3/96 Thursday HLS

In room 906, study 3278 the Colgate study, dog number 2554 is very thin and unkempt looking. She's very wild and hyper when she's being taken from her cage. Today I saw one of the nails on her hind foot was bleeding from the base of the nail. Her nails are very long and need to be trimmed.

10/5/96 Saturday HLS

In room 453, study 3321, the three pigs who were bled all squealed and hollered violently throughout the procedure. Kevin feigned jabbing the uncapped used syringe within inches of one pig's face because he was being so vocal and Kevin was in a bad mood. In room 455 the pigs were calmer and scrambled back into their cages themselves as soon as they were released.

All three pigs in this room had bruised and swollen necks from having blood drawn. Before each stick Kevin would say 'eany meany mini mo ...' (one side looked just as bad as the other).

Dog number 1193M had blood all over his cage when I went in to clean. He was splattered with blood and the walls were smeared and streaked with it. The end of his tail is raw and sore. About a quarter inch of the tail is bare and raw.

10/6/96 Sunday HLS

Kevin went into room 455 with Dilip to collect blood samples from the pigs.

Normally there are four people to collect blood, three to hold and one to bleed. I wondered how they would manage it with just the two of them. I heard a lot of clanging around and squealing and when I looked through the window I saw Dilip holding the pig and Kevin collecting the blood. Kevin came out of the room to get a new syringe and vial.

When they got the next pig out I heard a lot of squealing and banging around, it continued for some time. I heard Kevin swearing and then he came out of the room and asked if I could help them with this pig. He told me to put the dog I was holding on the floor and I think he got a new syringe. After the blood was drawn and the pig was in his cage, Dilip noticed he [the pig] was bleeding from his side. He gasped and said it was very bad.

He applied pressure to it and when Kevin re-entered to bleed the next pig Dilip told him about the injury. Kevin didn't blink an eye and said it was because the pig flipped over onto the needle when he was struggling.

I held the dogs from groups three and four from study 3316, rooms 454 and 456, while Kathy dosed them. Dilip held groups one and two while Kevin dosed them. The dogs are being dosed with test material 'alt946', the method is oral gavage (a tube is forced into the animal's stomach via the mouth and a substance is forced in with a syringe), the sponsor is Alteon, and the study is listed as 'Alteon 1 mo dog gavage.'

Kathy had me bring the dogs to her in the hallway and place them on a three-tiered rolling cart. She asked if I had done this before. I said no and she showed me how to grasp the dog’s throat area placing my thumb and forefinger on either side of his oesophagus. She told me I had to apply pressure so I could feel if the tube went down the right way. She told me I had to let her know if I could feel the tube or not.

If I couldn't feel it the tube it went in the lungs and not the stomach. She shoved the tubes down the dogs' throats quickly and forced the amber- coloured test liquid in quickly. One of the two females in group three from room 454 has a lump in her throat I could feel distinctly before the tube went down. When Kathy put the tube in I could feel it go as far as the lump and then stop.

She kept jamming the tube down, ramming it against the lump in the dog's throat. I told her it was hitting a lump and that's why it wasn't going down. Kathy kept forcing it and finally it went in. When it did, the dog yelped in pain. Kathy mimicked the dog's cry and told me to get the next dog. Kathy made several comments about Kevin dosing faster and turned it into a big joke, who could get it done faster. Several of the dogs gagged and coughed as I carried them back to their cages.

10/16/96 Wednesday HLS

Everyday I work, someone comments on how cute these puppies are in study 3325. Stephanie and Lynn have both said, 'It's hard to get anything else done, they're so cute I just want to play with them all the time.' I never know what to say in response to this because usually the other things they have to get done involve causing pain to other dogs, whom, apparently they consider less cute.

In study 96-3322, Nick and Kevin were bleeding dogs in the hallway outside of room 920 when I went into clean. I asked if I could go in to clean and Kevin told me I could do anything I wanted to in that room. I could clean, I could shoot them, I could do what ever I wanted. I asked if the dogs had given them a hard time with what they had to do. Nick said they had been very bad and Kevin agreed.

He said they had tried to bite them. Then Nick said if I go in and see any dogs walking funny and not able to hold their heads up not to worry - it was because Kevin had to hold them down and keep them in line. Kevin said he had to clothesline one of them at one point. I went in to clean and the first dog I picked up was 1264, a female extra.

She is extremely thin and when I opened the cage door she had to drag herself to the door. When I picked her up and put her in the exercise cage she didn't move at all and her back-end collapsed under her. I put in the other female extra and 1264 just huddled in the corner and didn't play. The other female extra seemed very quiet, too, but not as much as 1264. I went and told Kevin. When he saw me he said, 'A dog's bleeding all over right?' I said 'No, but 1264 is having trouble walking.'

He came into the room. While he held the other extra, he tossed 1264 into the back corner of the cage several times. Each time she hobbled forward toward the open door. He said she was fine and left the room. I put the dog on the floor to walk and she could not walk normally.

When I went into the surgery suite, Yao and Irene were getting ready to intubate number 1013. Irene told me they usually use Penathol but it was very expensive and these were just practice surgeries so they used the cocktail mixture. They had the beagle's head in an anaesthesia mask when I entered I was told the cocktail hadn't relaxed him enough.

Jennifer and Mahsa had already started practicing on 1067. Jennifer cut into the artery and blood sprayed all over her face. Al, the supervisor, immediately tried to sponge off Jennifer's face - she said loudly 'Don't worry about me! Attend to the dog - do I have the vessel clamped off or not?'

After Jennifer had the catheter in the vein, she pushed a long metal tube, called a trocar, up under the dog's skin starting from the incision she had made on her inner leg along her side and eventually forced it out through a small cut she had made near her shoulder. As she was doing this, the dog started coughing and gagging and Jennifer yelled, 'She's waking up.'

Al held the dog's mouth shut around the tube and turned the gas up. It took several minutes for 1067 to reach a surgical level of anaesthesia again and, in fact, I'm not sure if she ever did. I was told the dog's CO2 rate shown on the monitor should be between 40 and 50 and the heart rate should be around 10-15. When they're awake, Irene said the heart rate's around 50. When I looked at the monitor when 1067 woke up it was in the 40's and her CO2 rate was between 10 and 20.

Throughout the rest of the surgery her CO2 level stayed in the 30's and her heart rate stayed in the 20's. When Irene pushed the metal tube under the skin of the male dog his CO2 rate dropped dramatically from 43 to the teens and his heart rate shot up from 14 to the 30's. I pointed it out to Irene who called for Al. He re-inflated the cuff on the tube and turned the flow of anaesthesia up.

It took several minutes to ascertain whether there was a leak in the system or what. Al eventually decided Yao had not inflated the cuff enough. He showed me how to check the dog's jaw for tension and the capillary refill response to see of they were out or not. I thought the dog's jaw had some tension in it and he was twitching periodically. Al said it was all right, that he was deep enough for what they were doing today but wouldn't be if they were doing a more invasive procedure. I noticed both dogs woke up when the metal tube was rammed up under their skin.

10/17/96 Thursday HLS

I saw a necropsy being done in the room across from 906. When I looked through the door I saw a beagle soaked in blood partially skinned. A man was using a circular saw or drill to cut through the dog's skull. The skin on the dog's face and head was completely peeled off.

10/24/96 Thursday HLS

Brian told me about a former employee who was always high at work. He took a rat rack to cage washing, ready to be run through the automatic cage washer. Marilyn wheeled it down to Terry's office to show her - the rack still had rats on one side of it. He said it happens sometimes, and rats aren't too pretty after they've been run through the cage washer.

I cleaned room 918. I went to transfer the first group four dogs to the exercise cage and noticed she was twitching. She seemed disoriented and acted as if she couldn't see. Every few seconds her head would jerk violently to the side. I put her in the exercise cage alone and went to tell Walter (the other large animal supervisor). He looked at her and said 'It wasn't' good.'

In the exercise cage she was 'paddling' her feet and walking into the cage door as if it weren't there or she couldn't tell her feet to stop walking. She continued to twitch and jerk. When I tried to look at her she pulled and jerked away. Walt said later we would fill out a vet request but the problem was he didn't think she (the vet) was here today. He said it wasn't good.

I put her back in her cage and she twitched and seized for about 20 more minutes. When I put her in her cage her front feet went underneath her and she fell on her face.

10/27/96 Sunday HLS

2700 has sores on her nose. I pointed it out to Lynn when I obbed. She told me not to record it because they're scabbing over. She thinks they happen when 'they slam the cage door on their heads instead of taking the time to push them in before closing the door.'

3701M has sores on his head, 4701M has a sore on his tail that looks exactly like the one 1193M in 921 has on his tail. It's bleeding enough to turn the end of his tail red and the tip of it is raw and jagged. There are no clearly defined borders as if it were a cut. Lynn said it may have gotten caught in the door.

11/7/96 Thursday HLS

Held dogs from 3322 (Ligand Pharm. -rooms 920 and 921) for ECG's. Lynn ran the blood pressure machine and Lisa operated the ECG machine. Gene told me the company pays to have them taken but they may not ever have them read and analysed.

The dogs are brought to a room that is supposed to be somewhat quiet and held down on their right side on top of a rolling cart. If they struggle, the technicians edge them closer to the edge of the cart so their legs and part of their bodies are hanging off - I guess fear of falling keeps them from further struggling. If they do continue to struggle at this point, they do fall.

It was my job to hold the dogs' legs apart and off the cart. One dog continued to struggle causing the cart to roll away, leaving the dog suspended by his legs in my hands. Metal alligator, that are often rusty, are pinched onto the skin oil each leg, two on the chest and one on the dog's back.

The dogs definitely feel the pinch of the clips. Lisa told me she'd like to develop a plastic clip that wouldn't hurt them so much. The clips are tight enough to leave marks on the skin. If the clip won't stay on, they shave the hair in that area.

I've seen some of dogs have bald patches after ECG's that are nowhere near where the clips should be placed. I saw one of the rodent tox people tattooing mice for study 2478, the Colgate study. The mice are placed under a little glass jar hooked to C02 and their tails are stretched out outside the jar. The person tattooing holds the base of the tail down and starts tattooing.

I only watched a couple of mice being tattooed and saw them each squirming and nailing in the jar trying to get away. They were each very still in the jar before the tattooing started, but once the tattoo needle connected with their flesh, they went crazy, obviously feeling pain.

I watched Yao do a practice surgery on a rat from the extra colony. The rat was anaesthetized with isoflurane gas. Yao put femoral catheters in both sides of the rat and when he was though he said he had to euthanize it and there were a couple of ways to do it - Co2, dislocate the vertebrae, or sever an artery. He looked at the clock and said vertebra dislocation was quickest and he took the rat's nose from the anaesthesia cone and pulled up on her head, tugging it away from the rest of her body.

He said she was still breathing so he did it again. He tried a third time and still she was taking deep breaths. He said he would try another way - one that would surely work. He went into the prep area and came back with a large scissors. He cut open the little rat's stomach and snipped her backbone. Then he jammed the scissors up into the thoracic cavity and snipped randomly severing her aorta. He put down the bloody scissors and said she was dead now.

11/9/96 Saturday HLS

The portable exercise cages are particularly dangerous because you can't secure one dog in half of the cage and safely transport them one at a time. When the door opens both dogs are right at the edge and you have to move quickly to grab one and shut the door before the other one jumps.

I think a lot of the mysterious limps recorded are from cage trauma, either jumping or being dragged from the cage when a leg is trapped in a broken spot, or having the door slammed on a leg. The last male in the high dosage red group has blood on his tail again from chewing on it. When I looked, I saw the end of his tail is raw and bleeding.

11/13/96 Wednesday HLS

They dosed the dog while he was still in his cage. On the schedule they're listed as 'hot dogs' because of the radioactive material. The room is partially covered with coloured plastic. The carts they use in the hall way are covered in plastic. Because of the radioactive material, the room is a 'dry clean' room - it can't be cleaned with water.

The pans under the dog's cage are scooped and wiped out each day. The smell in the room is horrible. The air is so thick with the smell of faeces, any time the door opens, it can be smelled all down the hall. The technicians refer to it as the 'stinky room'.

It's a very small room, barely holding the four racks of cages. There are between four-eight dogs on study. They are really miserable and bark frantically if they see anyone through the window. Part of their cage is obstructed by a metal plate, so they can only see out if they stand up and look out.

11/14/96 Thursday HLS

Held dogs for blood in 3323. The dogs had pre-dose bloods taken, then they were dosed via oral gavage. Jennifer and Lynn were dosing and I heard them baby talk and 'good boy' them to get them to cooperate.

The scared, attention starved dogs wag their tails shyly and are anxious to please but when the dosing begins, their tails stop wagging, they struggle and cry. It made me sick to watch this emotional blackmail to get the dogs to submit.

The dogs had blood samples drawn at 15 minutes post dose, 30 minutes post dose, and 60 minutes post dose. The blood is taken from their necks.

By the time I started holding, the dogs had two samples taken and had been jabbed countless times. Several of them would cry as soon as the tech started pressing on their necks to find the vein. Some of them screamed uncontrollably, and we had to stop trying on some of them and wait for them to calm down. The human analogy for these episodes would be hysterics.

In between being grabbed from and shoved back in their cages and being jabbed and re-jabbed with needles, Lynn and Jennifer were shoving the dosing tubes down their throats. It was crazy and chaotic.

A woman came into the tech room to find out why there were no ECG or blood pressure readings for male primate, number 6631, in study 3221. Kathy said, 'Because, he's very big and has big fangs and [the study director] said it was ok to skip him this month because last time we dislocated his wrist.' The woman (who works upstairs in the offices) said, 'Man, you guys are tough!' Kathy shrugged and laughed and said, 'He did it himself.'

11/14/96 Thursday HLS

Lynn told a story about him [Kevin] finding out some thing right before they went to bleed dogs and she said 'Oh great! I have to go bleed dogs with him now and he'll probably throw the poor dogs against the wall.'

11/17/96 Sunday HLS

Kathy said this monkey had dropped dead right after dosing and another monkey in the study wasn't doing well. She said she hadn't killed anything (via improper dosing) for five years and didn't want to ruin her record.

She said, '[she] got suspended once for 3 days because she was holding off vein on a little monkey's leg and the monkey went one way and she still had the leg pointing straight up. Whoops! So, [she] had kind of killed that one because they had to euthanase it.' She told me suspension wasn't bad - she got to take a day here and a day there. She got off for her sister's graduation, took a Friday off...

I asked what she would do with the time off this time and she said '[she] wouldn't get anything for this because it was accidental - the other thing was cruelty.' [Brian Crane told me later she should have been fired for that. The real story was that they were all in a room bleeding, Kathy had a monkey's leg held off and she was screwing around and did a little pirouette with it - holding the monkey's leg in one hand and spinning under it like they were dancing.

He said they all heard the bone snap and knew right away what had happened. She had broken the primate's leg. When he said she should have been fired Irene agreed with him.]

I helped set up for surgery. At the pre-surgery meeting Gene said he would put one dog 'under' [anaesthesia] using just propofil on a syringe pump. Later, Brian told me Gene had really had to fight Terry, the vet, to get approval to try this anaesthetic. He said she definitely DID NOT want Gene to use it.

They sent me to get the first dog from the extra colony, dog number 11?? When I got her from her cage at about 10:00, I saw her food bowl was about one-third full. Brian, Jennifer, Yao and Gene were all in the prep room when I brought the dog in. I asked if the dogs should have been fasted prior to surgery and told them they had all been fed already.

Everyone just looked at each other until, finally, Gene said yes and looked at Jennifer, whom he had put in charge of prepping things for surgery. She said she thought we would start earlier and that the dogs are not fed until the afternoon so she didn't let anyone know to fast them. (the way the schedule's been lately, the extra colony is, to my knowledge, always obbed, fed and cleaned in the morning.) Gene said it would be all right we would just have to watch them closely in recovery and he motioned for the dog to be brought in.

Jennifer had trouble putting a catheter into the vein of dog number (the first dog), This is put in to administer the 'cocktail', prior to the isoflurane. Gene examined the tip of the catheter after she tried to get it in and told her she bent the tip on the dog's skin.

He told her she should make a little cut in the surface of the skin first, to make getting the needle in easier. Jennifer's expression was of disbelief. She said she didn't want to do that. Gene said he knew she didn't want to, but she should try it and see how much easier it made it. Jennifer finally got the catheter in, without slicing open the dog's skin, as Gene had suggested she do. She administered about half of the dose. The dog was still sitting upright so she injected the rest of the dose, then the dog was hooked up to the portable anaesthesia machine.

Gene told me the dog was just hooked up to oxygen. When Yao was shaving the dog, Gene asked him how the dog was doing and then said the dog wasn't breathing. Yao continued to prep the dog. Gene expressed concern over the situation several times and pumped the air bag into the dog three times. It took Yao and I several minutes to shave and scrub the dog.

Jennifer came in and upon hearing Gene express his concern over the dog not breathing, said, 'Just turn the isoflurane down. It's up to three.' Gene didn't know the dog was hooked up to gas and exclaimed over why that was. Jennifer told him we always do it that way, keep them on gas until they're brought into the surgical suite. Gene didn't think it was necessary, the cocktail should be enough for prepping.

Another dog was hooked up to isoflurane in the surgical suite, her legs tied and Jennifer made the incision for the catheter. Brian and Gene were adjusting the gas flow when the dog started taking deep breaths and moving around on the table. Jennifer had to lie on her to keep her still. Both Brian and Gene were fiddling with dials and exchanging information on the way they were used to doing things while the dog, with a one inch cut through her skin and muscle struggled on the table.

Finally, Jennifer said 'The heck with sterility!' and turned a dial on the machine and squeezed the bag into the dog's lungs. The dog, mercifully, quieted down almost immediately. While Jennifer was doing this, Gene was yelling, 'Wait! Wait! Do you know what you're doing? What are you doing?' Jennifer said she always did that. They had a disagreement over what she had done.

Obviously what Gene was doing was not getting the dog back under and what Jennifer did, did put the dog back under. She re- scrubbed and within a few minutes the dog wasn't breathing and her colour was poor. After several more minutes of adjustment, and fiddling, and conversation, Gene re-intubated the dog and upon checking the tube that was in her trachea originally, found that only half of the cuff was inflated. Jennifer said she had checked them all prior to surgery. This may be true, but, clearly, half of the cuff was not inflated.

Jennifer finished implanting the catheter. This dog cried and howled as she woke up and her vocalizations continued long after she was placed in the cold metal cage. I worried about the dogs' well being, when I saw they were placed directly on the cold metal floor grate of the cage immediately after they were extubated, still groggy from the anaesthetic.

I've read and been told by veterinarians that it's imperative the patient be kept warm until fully recovered from anaesthetic. The next dog operated on when through the same stormy recovery period, howling and crying.

The third dog, a female was brought in. Jennifer looked at her and said, 'Oh, I like this dog, she always likes to have her tummy rubbed. She's so sweet.' I held the dog so Gene could catheterise her for the anaesthetic. He announced he would show us his technique. He dug into her skin with the needle, cutting through her skin until she bled.

The dog cried and tried desperately to get away. I couldn't hold her still, she was struggling so much. Jennifer ended up holding her while Yao and Brian and I all helped. At one point, as Jennifer held the dog in midair (she had jumped, and Jennifer just had to go with her) and Yao and Brian tried to hold different parts of her still, and Gene was following them, catheter poking and jabbing at the bleeding dog, Brian rolled his eyes and said 'I can hear the circus music starting.'

The dog was deeply anaesthetised and she took a long time to wake up. Gene said she was much, much deeper than necessary.

While waiting for her to wake up, Gene pulled hard on her whiskers. Getting no response, he snapped his fingers loudly next to ear several times. As he was doing that, Brian pinched her toes hard and she straightened her leg. Still she wasn't getting up, so they continued pulling and tugging at her. Gene periodically pulled at her whiskers and clapped his hands right next to her ear.

In fact, he did this so often he looked like a senile old man, repeating the same task over and over again because he forgot he had just done it. The clapping was so loud and the pulling and pinching so extreme, I winced each time they tried getting a response from her.

Brian told stories about previous studies. One was a study that a European company ran for a product that was already on the market over there. He said the test material made the dogs' mammary glands and prostates get swollen, hard and blue. The dogs also lost a lot of hair.

He said it was just horrible, after dosing he went into ob and one of the dogs was standing up one minute and fell over dead the next. The test material raised their body temperatures really high. The company claimed it was U.S. dogs and not the test material, so one night Brian and someone else waited until around midnight for dogs to come in from the Netherlands. Gene talked about the syringe pump anaesthetic causing hallucinogenic fantasies.

I asked Al if the dogs get analgesics. He said 'No, not unless the vet recommends it and in this type of surgery it wasn't necessary.' Motioning to the dogs shivering and howling on the cage floor, he said, 'What you're seeing is just the recovery stage.' The dogs cried and whined in the cold cages still out from the anaesthesia - awake, but not able to stand yet.

I told him with the exception of one cat, I had never seen an animal have this difficult of a time recovering from surgery at the vet's office - that they never vocalize and cry like this. Al just shrugged and didn't say anymore about it.

Brian laughed about Jennifer's first dog having brain damage after not breathing for so long.

12/7/96 Saturday HLS

In 93-3093, monkey #6899 was trapped in front of the false back of the cage and had no access to water.

12/8/96 Sunday HLS

In room 957, James was curious and friendly as always. A couple of the monkeys will take a treat from my hand but most of them won't come near the front of the cage when I'm near them. All of the monkeys are so sad.

They live isolated in tiny cages without any companionship or mental stimulation. I think the reason James hangs on the front of his cage is because he's 1onely and afraid. He doesn't belong in this cage in this laboratory and he knows it.

12/11/96 Wednesday

Helped hold monkeys for pre-test bloods in 3334. The monkeys are forced to the front of the squeeze cage and trapped there by the false back. The technicians poke and pull whatever part of the animal they can reach without being bitten, banging and slamming the cage, until eventually a leg is pulled out of the cage.

Preferably, the leg is pulled through the feedhole but not always. Brian bled one monkey as she hung in midair on the cage door, saying, 'We take what we can get.'

As usual with blood samples, the technicians fish around inside the animal's leg until they find a vein. Stephanie and Rachel tried countless times on each monkey they bled. Both complaining about not being able to find the vein. Irene and Brian had better luck and obtained their samples a little easier but several times I heard Brian call the monkey he was bleeding 'bitch' if she moved at all.

The edges of the feedhole are rough and jagged and all of the monkeys had deep red marks, cuts and scratches on their thighs and stomachs from being forced through and held tightly against the rough metal. As I held the small legs in my hand I saw the fingerprints on the monkeys' hands and feet. Dilip told me each monkey has his or her own set of prints just like a human. No two are alike.

12/12/96 Thursday HLS

I held the pigs for bloods until 4:30 then went back at 9:00 for the last session. The pigs scream and kick violently when bled, especially today because their necks were so sore and bruised from the continual bloods. When pressure is applied to stop the bleeding afterwards, they scream so loudly I could hardly stand it. Technicians in the room would groan and yell 'Shut-Up' at the pig..

I can't imagine how sore they must have been after being thrown on their backs and bled so many times. The pigs who leave their cages gladly for cleaning were not given the chance to jump out today. They were dragged out.

At the night bleeding, the pigs were all sleeping and had to be dragged from their cages. They were so exhausted and reluctant to be bled again they didn't even stand up when the cage door was opened.

At the night bleeding, only Kevin, Dilip and I were there to bleed the first pig. Kevin walked in to get the pig from his cage for the sample. He grabbed a leg and threw the pig out of his cage - not pausing for a second after opening the cage door before grabbing the sleeping pig.

The pig landed on his face and didn't have time to get up before Kevin threw him in the trough for bleeding. I asked him sarcastically if it had been a long day, he didn't answer - but that was ok because I had been referring to the pigs when I asked.

12/15/96 Sunday HLS

I cleaned 3274. The dogs get so sick from the test material and vomit so often, sometimes I don't even notice it until I realize it's not rinsing off the cage floor as I clean.

12/19/96 Thursday HLS

Three of the dogs I held cried excessively when Kevin tried to get blood. They whimpered and screamed and eventually even involuntarily snapped because of the pain. When he finally repositioned the needle they quieted down slightly.

Several times Kevin had to fish around inside the dog to find the vein. This is common in all of the bloods I've held for. The technicians insert the needle and hope for the best. If they don't get blood they slide the needle in and out, back and forth until they hit a vein.

One of the dogs was so terrified and struggled so much I couldn't begin to hold him. Kevin called Dilip from the room he was cleaning to hold him. Kevin told him 'Dilip! I want you to break this dog!' They got the sample they wanted...

12/21/96 Saturday HLS

The dogs from 3328 were sac'ed today. They had to be brought over from I-wing to the necropsy room. James loaded four to eight dogs in an exercise cage and pulled them over to the main building. The puppies waited in the hall with the dumpster full or bloody garbage bags containing already dead dogs right next to them.

The table where the euthanasia is done was directly across from them. The smell or formaldehyde was heavy in the air and by the end of the day, there was blood all over the hallway.In room 957, my friendly little monkey who hangs on the cage door, lets me stroke his hand and drinks water droplets gently from the hose now paces nervously in his cage.

I wasn't even able to snap a picture of him because he was pacing so much. I couldn't figure out what would change his personality so much in just a few days. Later, I saw on the behaviour chart he had been acclimated to the nasal-gastric tube the day before. Where before I saw sad loneliness, now I see fear bordering on hysteria. A realization that what was a bad situation for this gentle little monkey has now become his worst nightmare.

12/22/96 Sunday HLS

Today I had to say goodbye to all the dogs in study 3274. They will be killed this week - some of them on Christmas Eve.

I'm trying to think of something remarkable I could write about them one last time. But, there's nothing too remarkable about being locked in a two-foot cage for one full year - getting lonelier and crazier and sicker as the days drag by.

I'm telling myself I'm glad for them. Glad they finally get the release death will bring. What I really think is it's just not right. Not right they will die without ever being loved.

1/2/97 Thursday

Irene, Cesair, Lynn and I acclimated the primates in 3314 to the ECG board. They really struggle and panic at being strapped down. This is so stressful on the primates I find it hard to believe any of the data is usable.

The primates are so afraid they jump wildly around the cage when the technician tries to catch them. They're trapped at the front of the cage by the false-back and the technicians bang on the cage, holler and curse at them until the primate ends up putting some part of their body against the front of the cage.

The techs grab whatever they can reach and pull - hair, skin, tail, finger, toe... Whatever they can grab. Eventually the primate is captured and with his or her arms locked securely behind his or her back, carried through the air to the ECG board.

The ECG board is a sheet of plexiglass with holes cut through it. The primate is strapped tightly to the board with long Velcro strips holding his/her legs down and a leather-gloved technician holding his shoulders down.

The techs place a couple or fingers over the primate's throat - if they struggle, they cut off their air supply. Many of the monkeys try to turn their heads to bite the technician's gloved hands and monkeys are heaved back into their cages by techs.

Blood pressure cuffs are placed around the primate's thighs. Usually the cuffs don't fit well and a Velcro strip has to be placed around it to hold it on. Brian told me we really shouldn't use the Velcro strips. If the cuffs aren't placed carefully, the Velcro on them pinch the skin and abrade it.

Metal clips that pinch so tightly they leave bruises and red sores are connected to arms, legs, chest and back.

Cesair carried the primates like prisoners of war to the ECG board and back to their cages. Several times (twice on video) he swung them backwards through the air, then quickly forward, acting like he was really going to throw them hard into their cages. When he did release them into the cage he tossed them to the back so they couldn't turn back around.

1/4/97 Saturday HLS

Obbed 2484. The rats have nothing to do in their barren cages but eat the poisoned food and sit on the cold metal wires.

When I was cleaning, I stopped to look at dog number 2550F, who was in the exercise cage all alone. She was doubled over in the cage with her head pushed up against the cage door. Her front paws were pressed tightly against the top of her head and as I watched, she started pawing at her head.

I opened the cage door to see what was wrong with her and she almost tumbled out of it because she was pressing forward so hard with the top of her head. She managed to sit up a little, but her body went rigid and her eyes were glassy and distant. Her tail was hanging rigidly straight down. Her head started to bob and rock back and forth. She was having a seizure.

Normally this dog is quite hyper and active. Her tail wags and she always follows me when I walk past her cage. When I spoke to her during the seizure she didn't respond at all. It was as if I wasn't there.

Her body was stiff and her head continued to bob for about three to four minutes. The whole seizure from start to finish lasted about five minutes. Afterwards she seemed normal. I couldn't see anything different in her personality or behaviour.

I found Kevin and told him about the seizure. He looked at the dog and said she seemed fine. I asked him if I should add it to the daily obs and fill out a vet request. He told me it wouldn't matter - she was getting sac'ed tomorrow anyway.

1/11/97 Saturday HLS

In study 3314, almost all of the primates have severe bruising on their legs from being held against the rough feeder hole for bloods (photo). I heard Rachel ask Stephanie if she had seen the way the monkeys looked after Nick bled them. They both rolled their eyes and exclaimed over how rough Nick is with the monkeys when he bleeds them.

1/15/97 Wednesday HLS

Occasionally one or two of the technicians would repeat the 'war cry' as they drew blood.

One primate was really struggling as he was carried to the table and restrained. Justin held the monkey down, with his thumbs over the monkey's throat.

This is a restraining tactic I've seen several of the technicians use including Justin, Dilip and Yimmer as it helps control a struggling primate by restricting his or her air supply) and the primate's arms pinned back. He leaned close to the monkey's face and yelled 'Stop it, before I bite your face!'

Several of the technicians, including Kathy, Irene, Brian and Justin had joked throughout the week about how many monkeys would die as a result of 'lung-shots' - if the naso-gastric tube is improperly placed in the animal's trachea and lung instead of their oesophagus and stomach, the animal receives the test material in the lung and dies within minutes.

Justin brought it up again during ECG's and went on to tell me about having a 'platinum club' in the past. He said I should ask Brian about it, he may still have the list. If you killed an animal you were in the club. He said he had the most kills. He said he killed a dog once - 'It just dropped over after dosing.' He said he broke a monkey's arm once and it had to be euthanased.

1/16/97 Thursday HLS

After the primates are injected with ketaset, they are left in their cages unattended as it takes affect. They literally drop to the cage floor as the anaesthetic takes affect. No one has ever mentioned their safety when they drop nor have I ever seen anyone try to prevent them from falling.

I saw several primates hanging onto the very top corner of their cage and fall helplessly to the bottom when the drug took affect.

Brian propped several of the primates up over the edge of the cage while he did the tb test. He walked away from monkey's several times, leaving them in that position after that the test - half in and half out of the cage.

The guillotine door was precariously lodged above them and could have fallen down and injured the animals at any time. One sedated primate was left hanging with her throat over the perch bar in her cage after being weighed and tb tested. Irene walked by and said, 'Who did that' and unlocked the cage door. I thought she was going to move the primate to a safer position, prone on her side as per SOP but she only removed the lock and re-locked it on the cage.

No one was concerned that the monkey's air supply would be cut off. Another primate flailed wildly as she recovered from anaesthesia. She crawled toward me and grasped as whatever she could reach to steady herself. Her eyelid was still bleeding from the tb test. Primate 2073 was very freaked out about being strapped down for his ECG.

He tried to turn his head and bite at Yimmer's leather gloved hands. Kevin came over and shook his finger in the restrained primate's face and said in a loud obnoxious voice 'Don't you bite my friend.' He grabbed the lotion bottle and quickly put lotion on all the contact points, saying loudly 'Here, Here, Here.'

He started to put the lotion down and stopped himself. He put the open lotion bottle into the primate's mouth and gave it a squeeze, leaving the bottle upside down in the monkey's mouth as he walked away. Dilip removed the bottle a couple of seconds later.

1/25/97 Saturday HLS

I checked the observation book for 96-3314 and saw that James has had decreased activity and a hunched appearance for the last seven days. I went in to see him at 1he end of the day. Room 958 had been bled and dosed shortly before I went in.

He was sitting in an upright foetal position with his head tucked down low. When he heard the door shut and all the other monkeys shrieking, he showed his teeth in a submissive, fearful way. I've seen many of the other primates do that, but never James.

He glanced at me when I knelt by the cage and then went back to staring at his feet. He shifted slightly so he was closer to the feeder hole. I reached in and stroked his back. He looked into my eyes and when he saw I could do nothing but stare back at him, he closed his eyes and curled up again.

1/26/97 Sunday HLS

During the meeting in the tech room today Kathy announced that she had seen injuries on every one of the monkeys in room 958 yesterday - from broken tails to nearly- severed fingers, all caused from people handling them improperly during tests and procedures.

She said she might not know everything but she had worked there a long time and she thought she was pretty damn good at catching monkeys and when she tried to offer advice to other people trying to catch monkeys, she didn't appreciate getting attitude from them.

She said her attitude toward catching monkeys changed when she broke one of their legs, and she knew some other people did when they saw tails lying on the floor. Eleanor spoke up and affirmed that no one better be pulling on the monkey's tails when they were trying to catch them because they do stretch and stretch and will eventually just fall off. She asked Walter if he remembered how gross that was the time they had to bleach all those.

Tonight I helped Brian, Yimmer, and Dilip with ECG's in room 958, study 3314. The primates wince and jump when the metal alligator clips are pinched onto their delicate skin and it's obvious by the way they jump that it hurts if the clip isn't opened completely when removed. If any hair is pulled with it they really jump and scream.

Brian pulled all the clips off fast, not taking any time to ease them off, and told Dilip he was showing me how I was supposed to be taking them off. The clips leave marks and bruises on their skin and sometimes you can see where the clips go by where the marks are from the last time tl.1ey had ECG's done.

Dilip was pointing out various cuts and abrasions on the primates and trying to record them in the ob book. Brian chastised him for that and waved away his concern. One of the primates in group five had such a deep cut in between his toes, it looked like one of his toes might fall off.

Some of the primates were bleeding from their mouths after being jammed against the cage door. I saw one primate had a bloody hole in her mouth where a tooth used to be.

1/30/97 Thursday HLS

I don't know if the dog jumped or if Henry slammed his leg in the cage door. Either is a definite possibility since I've seen Henry on several occasions slamming cage doors on dogs and grabbing them by the leg to lift them.

2/8/97 Saturday HLS

One of the group four rats has red lesions around his eye. There was blood smeared in the corner of his cage. I obbed it and told Brian about it. He said he didn't think 'it was a big deal'.

2/9/97 Sunday HLS

Dilip came into the tech room and told us one of the extra primates had gotten his hand stuck in the cage flooring. Rachel asked if he had tried lubing him. Dilip motioned with his hands the size of the stuck hand was approximately the size of an orange and the floor would need to be cut.

Rachel, Dilip and I went to the extra colony and on the way to the stuck primate's cage, Rachel said, 'That one's stuck, too.' She pointed to another female primate across the room. Her hand was stuck midway up her forearm and her hand and forearm were swollen to twice their normal size.

When I looked at the primate Dilip told us about I was amazed at what I saw. The primate was face down against the cage floor. Her entire arm, up to her armpit, was trapped on the other side of the cage.

I expected her hand to be swollen, but her whole arm was swollen. It was at least three times its normal size - it looked even bigger than her leg. The skin on her hand was shiny from being stretched so tightly because of the swelling.

Rachel and Dilip tried banging on the cages and yelling as if that would encourage the monkeys to get their own arms out. The monkeys screamed and shrieked in terror and pain, but obviously couldn't free their arms. Rachel opened the cage doors and tried pulling and twisting on the primate's arms. The monkeys continued to scream and cry.

Rachel gave each primate an injection of ketaset and the cages were moved to the floor. Dilip got the bolt cutters from the guard station.

The primate who was stuck up to her armpit was injected first. When she started getting relaxed they tipped her cage over so she was hanging from her trapped arm. I reached in and tried to support the weight of her body so the metal cage wouldn't cut her arm.

Rachel told me to let go of her. Her arm was so swollen, Dilip could hardly get the tip of the bolt cutters in between the arm and the cage. Eventually they were able to cut apart the cage and free her arm. The arm was so big they had to cut through two of the squares of caging before there was a larger enough opening for the arm to squeeze through.

Her arm was raw from the caging and bruises were already starting to appear. Dilip told me she probably been stuck since the night before.

2/12/97 Wednesday HLS

I went to the necropsy room after surgery and watched Brian and Jim finish the necropsy of one of the group four primates. The primate was split wide open in a pool of blood. I could still see her heart beating.

Al brought in the next primate. He had given the primate an injection of Xyla-ject. He brought her in wrapped up like a baby - in a garbage can liner, with just her head sticking out. They put her on the wet and bloody necropsy table.

Brian picked up his razor knife and grabbed a chunk of hair on her upper arm lifting the skin up. Then he began hacking at the arm. His razor was dull and he took several swipes before removing a chunk of flesh the size of a lemon. I was so shocked I couldn't even ask what he was doing - the primate was still very much alive!

While Jim approached with sodium pentobarbital, Brian drummed his fingers on the primate's mouth making noises. Jim injected the drug into the primate's very exposed vein while Brian held it off. I asked if that was the way they always did it. Brian told me 'Yeah, we're lazy.'

2/13/97 Thursday HLS

Eleanor put a butterfly in his arm and started the dose, via syringe pump. Within just a few seconds the dog was yelping and screaming and frantically trying to get out of the sling - I think his struggles were involuntary - he was just freaking out from the test material.

He was biting and snapping. His muzzle and eyes turned bright red. His face swelled up. His anal glands let loose. He urinated and defecated. His breathing was rapid and shallow and then raspy. Shortly after the dose was administered - over a two-minute period - the dog appeared to be in a stupor.

His eyes were glassy and his head went limp. After several minutes of this comatose like behaviour he started to wag his tail slightly. Eventually he was moved to the floor and deemed good enough to be returned to his cage.

2/19/97 Wednesday HLS

Al taught me how to bleed a rat via the retro-orbital sinus. A glass pipette is broken and the smooth side is inserted into the animal's eye socket. The rat's eyeball pressed completely into the socket as the pipette entered. He told me to twist the glass tube and apply pressure at the same time.

After pushing the glass tube deep into the eye socket and twisting three times, I felt something break and blood came rushing out of the pipette. Al told me to tip the rat upside down and let the blood flow out. After the pipette is removed blood fills the eye cavity and runs down the rat's face. Al put gauze over the eye and applied pressure. A few minutes later he killed the rat by cervical dislocation.

The animal I had to do this on was deeply anaesthetised with isoflurane, but normally this procedure is done on animals only lightly anaesthetised with Co2. Usually animals have this done when they're 'on-test', often more than just once, and they're not sac'ed after they have to suffer with the pain.

2/20/97 Thursday HLS

When Brian tied the dog's catheters off after dosing, he yanked them so hard the dogs' hind leg, where the catheter is attached to the inner muscle layer with stitches, literally was jerked up and off the table. Irene admonished him for pulling so hard and for pulling it out so far before tying it and dropping it back in.

The cut and knotted tubing is contaminated by the tech's hands and put back under the dog's skin. Once I saw a huge chunk of hair stuck to the tubing as it was jammed back under the dog's skin. When Brian tied the dog's catheters off after dosing, he yanked them so hard the dogs' hind leg, where the catheter is attached to the inner muscle layer with stitches, literally was jerked up and off the table.

Irene admonished him for pulling so hard and for pulling it out so far before tying it and dropping it back in. The cut and knotted tubing is contaminated by the tech's hands and put back under the dog's skin. Once I saw a huge chunk of hair stuck to the tubing as it was jammed back under the dog's skin.

3/9/97 Sunday HLS

I watched Rachel, Stephanie and Lisa IV dose group eight dogs in study 3337. There are eight dogs in group eight. They are brought in three at a time, and then two, into an empty room and tied into slings. All four of the dog's legs are strapped securely to the cart the sling is hung on.

A needle is inserted into one leg and the dose is administered with a syringe pump for ten minutes. The dogs vocalize, salivate, turn red, bite at the cart and eventually slump over - completely out of it.

In study 3323 Lynn dosed and I held. Kevin came in to help us dose 4219. Lynn had asked him beforehand because she knew we'd have problems getting the tube in his throat. She told me she walked by the room on Friday and every tech in the place was in the room dosing him.

She said there were like ten people holding him down. She told me just as Rachel had, 'Someone must've done something to him because he's really hard to dose and the dogs in this room are really good about it.' Kevin tried holding the dog while Lynn dosed, the dog struggled and screamed and cried.

After a lot of rough struggling, they switched places. Lynn and I tried holding him while Kevin dosed. Again there was a lot of struggling and eventually the dog made Kevin mad and he grabbed the dog's face and twisted his head around toward him. There is video of this and clearly Kevin lost his temper and used far more force than was necessary just to get back at the scared dog.

3/11/97 Tuesday HLS

I helped Kevin, Dilip, and Yimmer with ECG's in 3314. The ECG's are supposed to be done four hours after dosing, with only 5 minutes per ECG. Kevin was all stressed out about the time factor and kept screaming 'We should be able to do an ECG in three minutes! Come on! Faster!! Faster!!'

He kept telling Dilip to catch them faster. He kept hollering out to strap them down faster and clip them faster. He was so hyper and loud the primates were all upset and fought more than usual. While Kevin was holding one primate - pinned to the ECG board, he bent down low, right in the primate's face and screamed something about biting him in the face if he didn't stop it and cursed at him (see video for verbatim).

After Kevin was done threatening the scared monkey Dilip pointed out the primate's testicles had retracted way up into his stomach area. They were not visible except for a slight bulge through his abdominal wall. After we had done ECG's on several monkeys and Kevin was getting louder and meaner with each minute, I finally asked him to please calm down.

I told him he was stressing me out and making me very nervous. Earlier I had mentioned having a calm atmosphere for the monkeys to get accurate test results but that request had only succeeded in making Kevin louder and rougher with the primates. I had to emphasize how nervous his behaviour was making me several times and finally told him the louder he was and the more overbearing he was, the slower I would go because he was just really stressing me out and I couldn't take it.

After my 'threat' to go slower and slower he finally stopped yelling at us to hurry. Our ECG's were only running a few minutes behind - just like all the other times I've helped with them and there was no reason for us to be so rushed and to scare the monkeys more than they already are.

When we got to the group four monkeys Kevin switched with Dilip and started catching monkeys while Dilip held. He said he had to get us 'caught up' with the schedule and didn't give the monkeys any chance to resist when he started catching. He would bang the false back of the cage to the front of the cage quickly and very hard.

The primates were jammed in the small space in whatever position they landed in. This is in total disregard or Eleanor's memo to go slow and talk gently to them.

3/12/97 Wednesday HLS

Later, Brian came in the prep room and asked me who had intubated that dog. I told him and asked why. He said the tube was filled with blood and he wasn't very happy about it. When I saw the tube I couldn't believe how much bright red blood had filled the last three inches of it.

When she woke up in the cold room later, I felt sorry for her waking up with incisions in her back and inner thigh, sores and cuts on her front legs from the countless abo-cath punctures, and a sore throat from improper intubation, connected to a foreign box by a loud metal tube attached to and wrapped around her body, dressed in a confining, uncomfortable jacket with a large foam collar around her neck.

The misery these animals have to endure is unthinkable. What they go through, being relatively healthy and whole one minute and an hour or so later waking up in a confusing world of pain.

Animals who have femoral catheters implanted at Huntingdon Life Sciences in East Millstone receive no post surgical analgesics even though they exhibit obvious signs of pain e.g., shivering, vocalization, abnormal breathing patterns, excess salivation (even though they're routinely given atropine), Splinting, tail between the legs, lethargic behaviour.

Cesair was trying to get a hold of one primate who Dilip was holding on the door. The primate struggled and turned on Cesair who then slapped him saying 'He is a bad monkey, he needs to be spanked.'

I helped Dilip, Kevin and Yimmer bleed pigs. Kevin grabbed them by the leg and swung them out of their cages through the air. Instead of carrying the pigs he sometimes holds their hind legs and makes them walk on just their front legs. Sometimes he drags them across the floor on their face.

The six pigs all screamed loudly when they were flipped upside down in the bleeding trough and stuck with the needle. They have been having pharmacokinetic bloods done and they had been bled several times over the last day 'and a half.

3/13/97 Thursday HLS

Terry and Lynn X-rayed a dog from study 3327. I 'asked what was wrong and Terry said sarcastically that's what I'm trying to find out. Terry read the x-ray and said what a, sweet irony - it's a clean break in the exact same place in the exact same leg that we need for the bone study. She and Lynn both laughed. Terry wrapped the dog's leg in a metal splint.

3/20/97 Thursday HLS

Brian, Irene and I bled dogs in 3623. When Irene and I tried to bleed dog number 2750 she struggled so much I couldn't begin to hold her still. She yelped and cried whenever the needle got close to her neck.

Irene had Brian hold the puppy down when he came in and she tried to bleed her. The dog W3S so afraid she urinated before Irene got enough blood. Brian's shirt was soaked with urine and he was furious. He picked the dog up by the skin on her back and by the collar and threw her roughly down oil the sling cart.

He tied her into the sling, pulling the ropes around her legs extremely taut in his anger. He obtained the blood sample from her leg cursing at her the whole time. A tour came by and peered in the window at Brian as he bled the dog. Irene tried to tell him but he just ignored her.

3/22/97 Saturday HLS

James was all hunched over near the feeder hole when I went in to see him. He reached out for me right away when I knelt in front of him, then he quickly hunched over again. I don't know if he's sick and is uncomfortable in any other position or if he's just miserable. He let me rub his back and stroke his head for a while but he wouldn't take the treat I offered him.

3/26/97 Wednesday HLS

I saw Rodney come in to get dog number 8211, she is extremely fearful arid always hides face first in the back corner of her cage when the door is opened. I usually have to stand on the rack of the cage below so I'm able to reach her scruff to drag her forward.

When Rodney grabbed her he grabbed a handful of skin on her side and dragged her forward sideways, even lifting her out of the cage by the skin on her side. He's no taller than I am and it looked like whatever he could reach he grabbed.

I picked the rat up later in the day and saw she had a one to one and a half inch open wound (the whole length of the surgery site) open down to past the muscle layer. It's raw and bloody looking with pus apparent way down in the opening. A piece of plastic tubing is visible with a couple of inches hanging out of the wound.

A few hours after the bloods were done I noticed rat 4001's right eye was protruding from her head and was so blood-filled and scabbed over it looked black. The area is swollen and the eye is about twice the size of his other eye. He sits at the back of his cage with his head tipped to the side, leaning his sore eye into the side of the cage.

Irene told me 'That happens sometimes, quite often actually, but usually not when Al does it.' She said because rats' eyes protrude, they dry out quickly. She said the rat's eye would dry up and fall out soon and we'd probably see it lying on the floor.

The dogs in study 3337 were killed yesterday and today. The hall was filled with the smell of formaldehyde. I saw James - from necropsy, take a live puppy into the necropsy room where four tables were being used. He plopped the dog on a table right across from another table where a woman was using a big power saw to cut up the head of a mutilated dead beagle.

Behind James, another man shoved the bloody remains of another puppy into a garbage bag. I think they should euphonise the dogs in a quiet room away from the sight of already mutilated dogs.

Rodney told me while he worked at his other job, he sent his girlfriend a set of dog's eyes with a note that said 'I only have eyes for YOU.' Then he told me he later sent her a dog's heart with a note that said 'My heart belongs to you.'

3/27/96 Thursday HLS

I watched a necropsy from the window. A puppy from 3335 was completely cut open from neck to groin, his ribcage exposed. I saw the dog throw his head back and howl.

I thought it was just a final muscle convulsion after euthanasia, but then I saw the dog throw his head back writhing from side to side still vocalizing. The last writhing head throw happened when the person doing the necropsy sliced through the dog's leg muscles.

Irene told me they used to give the monkeys Ketaset and then slice them open all across their chest and neck to find the vein so they could exsanguinate them. She said they had to start giving them something else because basically the monkeys were awake they were just completely paralysed - they knew what was going on they just couldn't move.

Cardio had practice rat surgeries today. Brian went to the table where Irene was implanting a femoral catheter in a rat. He picked up a scissor in one hand and one of the rat's legs in the other and said, 'I think I'll cut his foot off.'

He started to close the scissors when Irene screamed, 'Brian! Don't you dare!' Brian laughed and said, 'You know I'd do it.' He didn't drop the rat's leg. Irene said, 'I worry about you having children.' Brian looked puzzled and asked her why.

Irene said again she really worried about him having children and said she hears about people like him all the time. After that Brian dropped the rat's leg and walked away saying 'It's just a rat. No matter what PETA wants us to think, it's just a rat. It's not a dog or a goat or a boy...'.

Al came in to check on the surgeries and saw Brian cutting his rat's heart out. Brian always cuts the rats wide open when he's done practicing and digs around until he finds the heart. He cuts it out and puts it the operating table several inches away from the rat. The heart continues to beat for several minutes as Brian pokes and prods and it and the rat.

If anyone rolls their eyes or says anything about it Brian always says very proudl, 'I'll never have nightmares about putting a still-alive rat in the freezer. I know they're dead when I get done with them - this is the only way to really be sure.' Al gave Brian a half- hearted admonishment and I said at least the rat still has four feet to alert Al, who is higher up than Brian, about what Brian had intended to do earlier.

Brian said 'Oh! That's right! I was going to cut his foot off.' He picked up a scissors in one hand and the rat's foot in the other and just before he could close the scissor Al said 'Brian!!' and stopped him. Brian giggled like a bad schoolboy caught chewing gum. Nothing else was ever said about it.

Rodney wrapped the rat in a paper towel saying he didn't like to look and put her in a plastic bag. Then he pulled her head one way and her body the other. He didn't spend more than a few seconds pulling at her. As he put the bag down I asked if he knew if she was dead - how did he know for sure.

He nodded knowingly and said, 'She's dead.' About twenty minutes later I saw the rat trying clumsily to crawl out of the plastic bag. I screamed for Rodney to come and look at the rat he had killed - she was still alive. He left the rat he was operating on open on the table and as he walked across the room said, 'No, she can't be.'

Putting her back in the plastic bag he grabbed her head in one hand and one leg in the other and pulled and twisted. Then he put some isoflurane on a paper towel and dropped it in the bag before tying it shut. Again, he didn't look for any vital signs before putting the rat down and assuming she was dead.

4/1/97 Tuesday HLS

I went in to pick up my check and asked Irene and Yao if the rat's eye in 3621 had fallen out. Irene said not yet. Yao said right away 'Rat number 4001', everyone knows what rat it is and no one is doing anything for him. I asked if a vet request had been put in. Irene said no and that she hadn't even been recording it and shrugged.

She said they never even record eye injuries from bleeding because they happen all the time and the rats live. I asked Irene the day I discovered if the rat shouldn't be euthanased and I asked Brian on Sunday if we shouldn't euthanase him. They both said no like it were a strange thing to ask about.

4/12/97 Saturday HLS

Theresa told me about the first time she went in to clean the pigs, the new hairless pigs, just this week. She asked me if I'd seen them today, laughed and told me they were all beat up, that she'd really killed them when she cleaned. She said no one had told her they'd never been handled and she didn't know how to clean the cages.

She said she didn't know you weren't supposed to let them out of their cages and when she tried to catch them to get them back in they each freaked out and had run blindly into walls and cages getting all scraped up and cut. She said one has a swollen face and anther has a big cut on his face, the other one has all kinds of scratches all over.

She said afterwards she told Rachel about it and Rachel took her in and showed her how to work with them. I looked through the window at the pigs and even from outside the room I could see the cuts on two of the little pigs and the swelling on the darker one's face.

4/13/97 Sunday HLS

When I went in to see James today he stared into my eyes and then down at his feet as I told him goodbye. Most of the monkeys in 3314, including James, will be killed on Thursday and Friday this week. They're scheduled for all kinds of blood work and ECG's as the study winds up and I told him I may not be able to see him again.

When I told him this he came to the centre of the door and pressed his whole face against the cage staring at me. I stroked his cheek and whispered goodbye and as I stood up and he moved back to his foetal position, it occurred to me, too late, that he was pressing his face forward for a kiss.

4/16/97 Wednesday HLS

The rat on the right side of the table was continually waking up and the anaesthesia adjusted as the rat was held down. While we waited for a replacement pump and for Mike Toth to come in and replace it, Lisa had to physically hold Rodney's rat down.

The rat was sitting upright on the table, his hind feet taped down his tail swinging wildly as he tried to escape. His abdomen was cut wide open exposing internal organs. Rodney continued to operate while Mike worked.

Gene says we'll use a primate from the extra colony for practice on Friday. He told us 'There's a monkey Terry wants euthanased because he's sick so we'll save him until Friday so we can hack him up a little.'

I made myself go in and talk to James one last time. I didn't want to - I walked by all the empty cages with their doors hanging open in the next room, the former occupants now in bloody bags in the freezer down the hall. My little friend looked at me and stretched out so I could rub his stomach one last time and quickly slouched over into his foetal position when I said good-bye.

4/26/97 Saturday HLS

Todd also talked to me about the dogs in study 3282 and what's in store for them in a few weeks. [The dogs' front leg will be broken and put in a splint]. He talked about how bad they'd be to work with after that, saying, 'They're bad enough now, can you imagine what they'll be like after that?'

Then he said 'They should just break all of their legs so they'll be easier to work with.' He joked about how great it would be to move them from to cage to cage if all of their legs were broken.

5/7/97 Wednesday HLS

All of the puppies jumped and pulled back when the tag was put on, some of them screamed. Because they're attached to the tethers and have jackets and foam collars on, the dogs can't even shake their heads after the ear-tag is pushed through.

They can't rub their sore ear with a foot or shake the pain away. All they can do is jump wildly in a tangled circle as the pain burns through.

Yao tried to yank the stemmed part of the tag back out through the hole in the dog' ear. The dog screamed in pain -the wide plug on the end of the tag is broader at the bottom and there's no way it could humanely go back through the hole in the ear.

Yao continued to pull at it and I had to push his hand out of the way so I could cut the tag off and try again. A couple of times, I could feel wet drop hitting my arms from the blood and tissue as the tag cut through the ear.

5/8/97 Thursday HLS

I saw Nick, Kevin, Walter and Stephanie in the hallway holding a puppy down on a cart. The puppy's head was turned toward the wall and the technicians were gathered around her hind end. I had read a draft protocol of an upcoming vaginal study and feared the worst when I stopped to watch what they were doing.

Kevin was using a butterfly needle to obtain blood samples from the puppy’s back leg. He was having trouble obtaining enough blood. Walter and Stephanie told me its part of the protocol to obtain blood this way. The sponsor claims they have a technician who can draw blood from the back leg using a butterfly and she can do it alone without taking the dog from the cage.

When Kevin tried twice to get blood and couldn't get enough of a sample Stephanie and Walter told him to give up and he replied in a stupid voice, 'I will never give up...' and reached for another spaz tube. Stephanie told me it's her study and they require TK bloods at several intervals and they're using the butterflies so the vein won't collapse before they're through.

Several times the dog got squirmy and tried to pull away. I had to keep moving in close to help hold the dog's head and distract him by rubbing his ears. Nick could have easily reached out a hand to help comfort the dog but he was oblivious to the puppy's discomfort and fear.

He stayed motionless, staring as Kevin jabbed and poked. At one point when the guys were fumbling around poking at the dog's leg and wondering what they should try next Stephanie grabbed the dog's head roughly with both hands and said, 'I know. They don't know what they're doing.' The puppy was so very startled he pulled back from her and looked wide-eyed at me.

All I could think about was, I'm relieved they aren't practicing a vaginal dose on this poor vulnerable puppy. The fact these poor animals are held down and subjected to what ever horror the protocol calls for is bad enough but to see several inept people gathered around to practice on a completely helpless victim is unbearable.

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