[HN Gopher] The emotional toll of caring for research animals
___________________________________________________________________
The emotional toll of caring for research animals
Author : nottathrowaway3
Score : 103 points
Date : 2023-03-14 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| swayvil wrote:
| The best test animal is humans of course. But that's generally
| considered to be an abomination of biblical proportions.
|
| Big-time cognitive dissonance there.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| I agree with you and I believe you should volunteer as a test
| subject for all experiments you can get your hands on!
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Even though you're joking, we are all participants in these
| experiments, when you consider how inexact so much of
| experimental medicine is.
| kens wrote:
| The "Self-experimentation in medicine" page has a lot of wild
| stories that I recommend reading:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medici...
| frozenport wrote:
| Nope. Humans have really long life cycles. Imagine how long an
| experiment that requires 2 generations of humans will take?
|
| Behavioral problems, etc make reproducibility harder.
|
| When we can overcome those problems, like with cultured cells,
| most prefer human cell lines.
|
| But the intention is to have a "model" rather than the full
| thing.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| smm11 wrote:
| Offer better food or whatever to those serving life sentences in
| prison, if they agree to the testing. There's consent.
| gowld wrote:
| Why only prison? The only reason to add that qualifier is if
| you know they won't freely consent.
| pprotas wrote:
| Now I'm imagining prison guards threatening go take away food
| if the inmates don't agree to testing...
| mattkrause wrote:
| The rules around working with prisoners or other captive
| audiences are strict _because_ it's so easy to apply undue
| pressure to them.
|
| The goal isn't just to get someone to say "okay"; the point is
| to make sure they're doing so freely and with a complete
| understanding of the possible outcomes.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I was once in a running group with a guy who worked for Stanford
| inducing cancers in dogs, to trial and error test various
| treatments.
|
| Personally I find this unconscionable, as there's an endless
| supply of all cancers in most species which would benefit from
| treatments.
|
| It was an hour run, the time he spoke of it, of absolutely
| disgusting shame for our species and in particular because these
| experiments were largely grant securing.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I would argue we treat pigs (which are comparable to dogs in
| terms of intelligence) raised for slaughter much worse than
| these dogs. Yet I still eat bacon.
|
| Moral consistency on animal welfare is really hard because we
| have so many blind spots due to how commonplace some practices
| are. There is definitely a push for ending things like
| cosmetics testing on animals[1], but I'm not sure we can or
| should stop testing things like cancer treatments on animals.
| At least not until we have viable alternatives.
|
| [1] https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/timeline-
| cosmetics-t...
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Is it really a blind spot if you're aware yet still continue
| to support the behavior? Seems like mental gymnastics to feel
| less bad. "Well, I'm not absolutely certain this particular
| pig was mistreated, so..."
| stametseater wrote:
| > _Moral consistency on animal welfare is really hard because
| we have so many blind spots due to how commonplace some
| practices are._
|
| That really depends on what kind of value system you're
| starting with.
| aschearer wrote:
| Careful, one false step and you'll become vegan.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| > I would argue we treat pigs (which are comparable to dogs
| in terms of intelligence)
|
| Closer to toddlers actually. I'm not a vegetarian or animals
| rights activist or anything but I'm kind of surprised people
| eat pigs with how smart they are.
| devb wrote:
| > Yet I still eat bacon.
|
| How do you rationalize that? Not many people admit to being
| aware of the way food animals are treated.
|
| I'm legitimately curious, not trolling.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I wonder if they ran an a prior power analysis to see if the
| effect size they were looking for even had a good chance of
| being discovered.
| Fomite wrote:
| If they are at all subject to a functional IACUC (i.e. at a
| university) this is required. The bar for testing things on
| (especially charismatic) animals is quite high.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I have seen otherwise. And statistical literacy is quite
| low.
| Fomite wrote:
| On the second point we agree - but I have seen people
| absolutely torn apart for sloppy sample size calculations
| when it comes to animals.
| y-curious wrote:
| It's a slippery slope. You can't test on people, and need
| animals that have similar drug kinetics. That being said, so
| much drug research is unnecessary garbage, and living beings
| pay the price.
|
| I worked in immunotherapeutics and gave cancer to ~25 mice. I
| can't say it helped progress the field much, and I still feel
| bad. Cannot imagine what it's like to give cancer to a dog.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| the word is evil, from all i heard.
|
| and it was (long story short) greed, not science. just
| appalling.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Is it so outrageous to say that a dog's life has less value
| than a human's?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Who mentioned humans?
|
| I think I know what you mean, but the impression was that the
| tests were for treatments in dogs, perhaps the presumption
| being they'd work in humans, but that was not clear.
| kajic wrote:
| It depends on who you ask. What would a dog answer if it
| could contemplate the question and say its piece?
| optymizer wrote:
| It doesn't matter. This is the real world, not the
| imaginary world where dogs can speak.
|
| You have to accept that in the real world a dog's life is
| objectively worth less to humans than a human life.
|
| If that were not true, then it would be generally accepted
| that saving a dog would take priority over a child, whereas
| the reverse is true.
|
| I'm not advocating for mistreating dogs, I'm advocating for
| distinguishing between how we would like the world to be
| and how the world really is.
| gowld wrote:
| What about a million dogs?
|
| A stranger's life is also worth less than my daughter's
| life. A million strangers?
| colmvp wrote:
| Your statement made me realize I should empathize with
| the machines in the Matrix. After all, a human life is
| objectively worth less to machines than to humans. A
| machine can last for centuries and can have more utility
| on a daily basis than a human.
| stametseater wrote:
| Different things have different values, which you seem to
| have realized here: "a human life is objectively worth
| less _to machines_ " _" To machines"_ is the important
| part. But unless you're a machine, it would be strange
| for you to have machine values, so I don't understand why
| you say that you _should_ empathize with the machines.
| Unless... are you an LLM?
|
| Anyway, different sorts of things having different values
| is why so many people are concerned about powerful non-
| human entities with inhuman motivations (AIs generally,
| and corporations particularly.) It's also the reason
| people are afraid of hungry bears (the bear cares more
| about itself than you.)
| TheMode wrote:
| The dog would say that it has more value, same for a tree,
| or an ant. If we had to fully protect everything
| categorized as intelligent/living, we wouldn't do much.
|
| Dogs may be a hard no for someone, and yes for someone
| else. It's kinda arbitrary.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Well the whole point is that it can't.
| [deleted]
| wittycardio wrote:
| Yes.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| To study cures for cancer you need to induce the exact type of
| cancer you are trying to treat in dozens of identical animals
| that are as similar as possible to humans, and do so in a
| reproducible way. suggesting you could just go and work with
| any old animal that happens to have some sort of cancer is
| incredibly naive.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Who mentioned humans?
| gowld wrote:
| You were vague, so readers used the most probable parse:
| that the dogs were used for human-medical research.
|
| Anyway, pet owners aren't lining up to volunteer their pets
| for experimental treatments, so researching dog cancer on
| random sick dogs isn't a great model either.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| > But one of Van Hooser's biggest pushes is to make the
| university's invisible population feel seen. He encourages
| scientists to name animal workers in meeting posters and
| publications. He also invites researchers to visit animal
| facilities (their labs are often in a different part of campus)
| to explain the importance of their science.
|
| This sounds grim that this is a big push. Scientists not even
| working on their own animals, leaving technicians to kill them
| without ever thanking the technician, and the technician never
| knowing why animals they feed and clean after for years suffer
| and die.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Becoming too attached will ruin the experiment. Science is done
| under controlled conditions with as much uncertainty and
| randomness removed as possible. It's not ideal but we don't
| have any better options unless you want to do mass sacrifice of
| animals at scale and use Monte Carlo to derive results.
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| A lot of the research is entirely unnecessary. We know
| cadmium is biologically unnecessary. While it is important to
| quantify safe doses to understand the impact of pollution,
| getting the precise LD50 of it across various species does
| little to improve health outcomes.
|
| We already know that dosages above 10 micrograms/kg of body
| weight is carcinogenic and should be avoided, so establishing
| where in the 100,000-300,000 microgram/kg range the LD50
| resides does nothing for us.
| jmcmaster wrote:
| The best LD50 story I've heard was an Agriculture Canada
| scientist working on biocontrols for pests (think natural
| pathogenic organisms like fungi or bacteria to control
| weeds instead of chemical pesticide). Policy and
| commercialization required an LD50 for a bacterium they
| were working with. It is nontoxic; the lab calculated the
| volume of bacterial solution at commercial application
| strength that it would take for a rat to drown (but
| obviously did not harm any animals). Sometimes regulatory
| compliance needs creativity.
|
| Unfortunate that not all labs are able to work similarly,
| especially as you say for doses where we already know
| harmful levels and LD50 is a bureaucratic requirement or an
| easy paper.
| serf wrote:
| >It's not ideal but we don't have any better options
|
| as someone else noted, a lot of this is done as a form of
| grant-securing, and it's done on a long-term 'maintenance'
| basis rather than on experiment-basis.
|
| a 'better option' would be the removal of such political and
| economical games from facilities that are supposed to be
| doing _research_ ; this reduces the suffering and death
| without much loss to discovery and progress.
|
| the trick being that we, as humans in this world, have little
| hope of removing extraneous politics from where they do not
| belong.
|
| but I just care to point out that we're nowhere-near optimal
| w.r.t. how we operate in the research sector. _it can be
| better._
| searine wrote:
| >and it's done on a long-term 'maintenance' basis rather
| than on experiment-basis.
|
| The thing is, you can't just start and stop many kinds of
| animal research. For certain models, there needs to be
| ongoing maintenance of a breeding population so that that
| model is available for researchers when they need it for an
| experiment.
|
| Researchers spend decades making a particular knockout
| line, and you can't just stick it into a freezer for a
| rainy day. It has to be maintained or it will no longer
| exist.
|
| Nobody is getting rich off grants. Then maintenance is a
| necessity if research gains are to be made on these
| difficult diseases.
| Fomite wrote:
| This. The maintenance of many experimental populations is
| because you can't "spin up and spin down" animals like
| you can an EC2 instance. Perhaps you need functional
| colonies. Or specific lines of animals, etc.
|
| Science isn't done via single experiments - it's done by
| chains of them.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I think there is plenty of room between "completely
| oblivious" and "emotionally attached enough to ruin results".
| Fomite wrote:
| It's not as grim as you're considering. One of the things you
| want is people who _know what they 're doing_ taking care of
| the animals in question.
|
| When we're working with humans taking blood draws, we want
| trained phlebotomy technicians taking blood draws, not because
| we're monstrously detached from our subjects, but because our
| expertise is elsewhere (for example, antibody detection).
|
| If you're working with research animals, you want their care
| (and yes, their deaths) done and supervised by someone who is
| an expert in that specifically.
|
| Should researchers see the facilities their animals are housed
| in, and acknowledge the efforts of those workers? Absolutely.
| But that's hardly because scientists are uncaring - it's a
| result of things like the animal housing sites often being at
| the very periphery of campuses, and science generally having
| not done a good enough job acknowledging the efforts of
| technicians in all aspects of science, dating back decades.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| The emotional toll of dispatching lots of small animals, even
| if you are not bonded with them, is real.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Porcelain people that shatters at the minimum problem
| crying rivers of drama are not prepared to do this kind of
| work for sure. They should be selling cosmetics, playing
| sad piano tunes or picking strawberries instead. The
| cliches described here shouldn't be doing this kind of job
| or trying to find a cure for lethal diseases.
|
| But the fact is that most of the women and men that work in
| a lab never develop a phobia towards blood, accept that
| dealing with death is part of the life, and don't have
| problems or "emotional tools" with the idea of breeding
| animals.
| Fomite wrote:
| I never said it wasn't - I know people who work in those
| facilities, and it takes a massive emotional toll. I'm just
| suggesting that the scientists who _don 't_ deal with their
| own animals aren't doing it because they're callous - it's
| because we need people who will do it right, and with
| minimal suffering to the animal.
| musicale wrote:
| > scientists who don't deal with their own animals aren't
| doing it because they're callous
|
| Much like meat eaters who avoid slaughterhouses...
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Maybe it should have been clear after trying to get high off
| breathing dry ice and alcohol as a kid (urban legend), or reading
| about experimental methods to elicit panic response, but it
| became undeniably clear after a bunch of rat sacrifices that CO2
| asphyxiation is one of the most unpleasant ways to die. Surprised
| it's still allowed
| TylerE wrote:
| It's highly species dependent, even among mammals. Some have a
| true low oxygen drive and not a high co2 drive. Mainly
| borrowing animals
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| In mice it's generally used to knock the mice out before
| another method is used to sacrifice them (cervical
| dislocation).
| whyenot wrote:
| Euthanasia by "cervical dislocation" is killing animals by
| breaking their necks. It may very well be the most humane
| option, but nothing is gained by using jargon and
| obfuscation.
| stametseater wrote:
| People use technical jargon in all kinds of scenarios in
| which there's no plausible motive for obfuscation, use of
| jargon isn't evidence of deliberate obfuscation. In this
| particular case, "break their necks" sounds fairly humane
| while "cervical dislocation" sounds unpleasantly clinical,
| so I doubt this particular jargon is intended to obfuscate.
|
| On the other hand, _" put it to sleep"_ is definitely such
| an obfuscation.
| rafark wrote:
| Just make it ilegal already. If we want testing, just test with
| human *volunteers*. It's only fair.
| carabiner wrote:
| I would volunteer to get cancer.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| I think a lot of the diseases and stuff they studied worked
| better on animals that aged faster than humans.
|
| The way to justify animal testing is to say, "Ok, we can make
| these animals suffer for 50 years... or we can make humanity
| continue to suffer or another 250 in order to better
| understand this and how the disease grows and evolves...
| what's worse?"
|
| But... that's the only way I can think to justify it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| My mom studied xenotransplantation in non-human primates and
| pigs. I worked in the veterinary resources department for a
| couple summers and I can confirm it can be draining. Especially
| since like most vet resources departments it's in the basement.
| The best part of the baboons' day is usually when they get to
| watch The Lion King for enrichment. After a few times they become
| so familiar with it that they are excited when their favorite
| scenes are coming up. It's heartbreaking, but at the same time,
| if we can figure out how to successfully stop organ rejection
| then we will most likely have cured cancer on the way, and have a
| much better understanding of how the immune system functions.
| sclarisse wrote:
| The impact, I suppose, is uneven. Anecdotally, I knew a young
| woman who wanted to help people and ended up as a biotech intern
| at a regenerative medicine institute where she spent her summer
| giving puncture wounds to rats. It was very hard on her.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I sympathize. My wife once told me I could not be a vet, because
| I would need to be able to put the animals down. The more I
| learn, the more I understand what she meant by it.
|
| I dislike unnecessary suffering and some of it does sound very
| unnecessary. I can give some level of dispensation for necessary
| pain, but even then it should be a good reason ( and it seems
| sometimes the reasons are in the 'not great' category ).
|
| All that said, what are the options here with regards to research
| animals?
|
| 1. We stop research on all animals 2. We don't stop 3. We
| research even more 4. We adjust it to some more acceptable status
| quo
|
| Personally, I have a recent opinion that may jar some as I am
| more and more leaning towards #1. I think what eventually got me
| was dog cloning services in US.
|
| What will follow is a move a different type of testing ( and
| hopefully more humane ): human testing.
|
| It will come with its own set of issues, but, at least, subjects
| will be able to consent.
| zdw wrote:
| Related - suicide rates are much higher for Veterinarians and
| techs than the general public:
|
| https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2019/09/04/veterina...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| How does it compare against human doctors?
|
| Perhaps something about caring for animals attracts depressed
| or possibly suicidal people in the first place.
|
| Just an anecdote, but within 1 month in 2018, the lady I
| adopted my dog from(Stacey Radin), my dog walker, and a lady
| who ran a horse rescue in my hometown all committed
| suicide(none knew each other). I don't think I know anyone else
| directly who has committed suicide, and they all worked with
| animals.
| gen220 wrote:
| As another pointed out, it's worse than the situation for
| human doctors (although I'm sure you can find a sub-
| discipline that's closer to veterinarians).
|
| Imagine you're a human doctor, except your patients are mute
| and can't give consent, and they're brought to you in a sorry
| state for emergency care by people who are frequently hostile
| and grossly neglectful to your patients. To that pile of
| daily woes, add significant student debt, chronic under-
| staffing issues, and increasing PE ownership.
|
| It's a really tough industry, almost everything is stacked
| against them. [I've worked in a pet-care-adjacent space for a
| few years].
| shagie wrote:
| Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let's talk about it -
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
|
| > Several studies have identified a link between suicide and
| occupation (1), including the healthcare professions and our
| own profession. The rate of suicide in the veterinary
| profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the
| dental profession, more than twice that of the medical
| profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general
| population (3).
| 98codes wrote:
| Am I reading this right? Those in the dental profession
| commit suicide at 2x the rate of the general population?
| shagie wrote:
| That is the statement there... and some of the other
| material on it.
|
| --
|
| https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/publication/?i=7583
| 12&...
|
| > Suicide rates among dentists and a perceived elevated
| risk for suicide have been debated in academic
| publications worldwide for decades.
|
| > A 2011 study of the Danish population published in the
| November 2011 issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders
| found that dentists had higher age and gender-adjusted
| rate ratios for suicide and risk for suicide compared
| with the general population. It reports that dentists
| held the highest suicide rate at 7.18 percent for men and
| women combined, and that these suicides rates are much
| higher than the national average. The national average
| for men and women was reported as 0.42 percent. Male
| dentists held the highest suicide rate at 8.02 percent.
| Female dentists held the fourth highest suicide rate at
| 5.28 percent.
|
| > In 2017, the British Dental Association found that
| 17.6% of the dentists they surveyed have seriously
| considered committing suicide.
|
| ---
|
| Dentists and Suicide: A Look at the Numbers -
| https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/dentists-and-
| suicid...
|
| > The Center for Disease Control's most recent report in
| 2016 on "Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation" does
| not list dentists separately, but rather groups them in
| with other healthcare workers, ranking eleventh. And yet,
| despite the lack of any hard evidence, the myth regarding
| dentists being the number one suicide occupation
| stubbornly persists, casting a negative light on the
| profession. Not only can this affect the well-being of
| practitioners, it can also negatively influence
| perceptions by patients and by students considering
| dentistry as a prospective career.
| [deleted]
| duskwuff wrote:
| You are correct, and why this is the case is an open
| question. I've heard theories ranging anywhere from the
| financial (a dental degree costs nearly as much as a
| medical degree, and the job prospects are more limited)
| to the physiological (long-term exposure to anaesthetic
| gases during oral surgery may cause mood changes).
| dbg31415 wrote:
| In college, one of my friends worked in an animal lab on campus.
|
| There were something like 3,000 dogs... all in one building...
| all penned up from birth.
|
| And upon hearing about the 3,000 dogs, I was like, "Can I see
| them?"
|
| So she snuck me in.
|
| And they were all bred to have some disorder, I don't remember
| what now, but like the article said... it was fatal.
|
| And we got to the lab at like 9 PM and nobody else was there.
|
| The dogs were all so happy to see us. God they seemed lonely.
| They were kept in these little like 10x14 pens, 2-3 dogs per pen.
| Some dogs were in cages.
|
| But like... they were just dogs. Y'know? Most were just happy and
| looking to be pet, and it was overwhelming to be there.
|
| I got to give some treats.
|
| One of the pens had a dead dog in it, and my friend agonized over
| dealing with it or waiting until her shift officially started --
| she didn't want to leave the dead dog in the pen, and she didn't
| want people to know she was sneaking her friends in to play with
| the dogs. So she decided to deal with the dog, and just tell her
| supervisor she came back for her wallet or something.
|
| Anyway, for a kid 2,500 miles away from home... who missed his
| dogs... it was really nice to have an hour to play with puppies
| and young dogs.
|
| As we were leaving she said that most of the dogs were euthanized
| at the 6-month mark to check for heart defects, or heart issues.
| Even the healthy dogs.
|
| Fuck it was devastating to hear that.
|
| I'm sure there's a reason and I'm sure we benefit somehow... and
| a dog who has never seen the sun, and will never see the sun,
| probably doesn't know what all they are missing... but they have
| to know, right? Like every living thing has to know they weren't
| made to sit in a little pen waiting to die.
|
| I don't know, just felt like they should be outside, playing in a
| field, all that stuff... being mentally challenged and taught how
| to fetch and instead... they were bred just so their hearts would
| fail, or so they could be killed and dissected to see why their
| heart didn't fail.
|
| Most people at the school didn't even know there was a dog lab
| like that on campus.
|
| Easier not to think about this stuff.
| carabiner wrote:
| Aside, but what compels you to write in this LinkedIn broetry
| style?
| nottathrowaway3 wrote:
| (1) The "Linkedin style" is certainly not unique to males.
|
| (2) It was a good story and a relevant comment.
|
| No reason to bring gender into this discussion, why not
| criticize/discuss the comment itself.
| philg_jr wrote:
| This comment was unnecessary. The parent comment was on
| topic, emotional to read, and felt authentic to me.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Uh, maybe just how I tell a story. Wasn't intentionally
| trying for any specific style.
|
| I like the term "LinkedIn Broetry" though... instantly knew
| what you meant. Ha.
| dangle1 wrote:
| Very interesting article that brought up many memories, but this
| feels like too public a space to discuss given the stigma and
| anger that can get focused on animal research topics.
|
| It seems like modeling clinical conferences that discuss patient
| cases that have been particularly upsetting to staff could be a
| model for animal care staff as well. Something like a monthly
| meeting where animal care staff and research staff could
| decompress and discuss the importance of the research that is
| being conducted while acknowledging the unique emotional toll of
| working with animals.
| checkcircuits wrote:
| There's not much you can do to "decompress" when you go to
| work, sentence dogs to death, and then go home to your family
| pet and look at them thinking they could've been one of those
| dogs. I've met meat packers who still are haunted by the
| animals they killed.
|
| It's because humans have moral and ethnical frameworks. Despite
| a document drafting XYZ is okay because "its for science" it
| still is wrong in the sense you are sacrificing something with
| a memory, sadness, happiness, etc for a _possible_ "greater
| good". Especially for dogs, an animal deeply engrained and
| coevolved with humans, I cannot imagine the amount of cognitive
| dissonance, or more likely, sociopathy that would be required
| to engage in such experiments.
|
| We trivialize the fact it's unethical to experiment on humans.
| I am not a treehugger or anything but to suggest talk therapy
| will help solve a very real moral and ethical problem...well
| I'm not sure you understand. Veterinarians have an extremely
| high suicide rate for a reason. Moreover, I will never forget
| the callousness of the veterinarian who suggested I put my
| family dog down for something that wasn't immediately fatal.
| It's only a small step from that asshole to these assholes and
| that step is complete transcendence into pathological
| psychopathy. We simply sometimes benefit from these psychopaths
| gassing dogs and pigs. It does not imply such a thing is either
| morally or ethically correct and no amount of "decompressing"
| will fix it. It just is what it is and some people have
| developed the pathological brain wiring to allow themselves to
| do it.
| gadders wrote:
| Yeah, fuck that job. I couldn't do it.
|
| In the UK, all abattoirs have to have a vet in attendance when
| they are slaughtering animals. I always thought finding that your
| job as a vet must feel like a weird career turn. You become a vet
| to help sick animals and now you're helping kill healthy ones.
| Fomite wrote:
| I know a couple veterinarians who bounced off this during large
| animal medicine training, but those that did take an approach
| not dissimilar to a lot of Heroic Defense Lawyer Protagonists
| on television: This is going to happen, and its their job to
| make sure it happens with the absolute minimum of suffering
| (and also that the animals are indeed healthy).
| Fomite wrote:
| A lot of people are assuming this is purely about research for
| human products/treatments.
|
| The researcher who was the most drained from her work was doing
| work that was entirely focused _on the animals she works with_.
| Veterinary schools use research animals as well.
| neilv wrote:
| A dear friend who loved animals was a veterinary tech, who'd
| switched from pet clinic work, to a university-affiliated
| research lab. She died suddenly, very young, it seems probably
| due to experience as a vet tech at the lab.
|
| Some of this article sounds familiar, including (near the end)
| the sneaking off to find somewhere to cry. Even though she was
| pretty tough.
|
| I don't recall her mentioning troubles related to the animals,
| other than some physical pain related to some of the repetitive
| movements handling small cages, and being bothered if other techs
| didn't do the animal care properly.
|
| She _did_ have problems with a clique of other vet techs bullying
| her. Though some techs were nice, and the supervising vet and the
| head of the lab were nice to her, and mostly supportive, other
| than not managing to fix the nastiness problem.
|
| Going only from one person's experience, and this short article:
|
| 1. Can the nature of the lab vet tech work lead to, or select
| for, nastiness in some people?
|
| 2. Do labs let some bad behavior slide, due to the difficulty of
| hiring (given that the work can be rough, and the pay is poor)?
| JellyBeanThief wrote:
| A close family member of mine runs a small animal hospital
| which routinely hires high school students as cage cleaners and
| dog walkers. Animal comfort is top priority, and the standard
| of comfort is very high. For instance, employees are expected
| to learn how to read and heed animal body language, and to
| control their own body language and voices to be as non-
| threatening and friendly as possible.
|
| Very few new hires have any inkling about any of this when they
| start, so there's a period of a few weeks where they're
| forgiven a lot. It's a big ask, because a lot of it is new
| habits, and some of it can be strange new thinking, too. But
| ultimately the hires who can't adapt are fired.
|
| Consequently a lot of the hires end up studying animal science
| or veterinary medicine later on. My point is: the nature of the
| work that comes before the lab tech work can have an impact,
| too.
| Fomite wrote:
| Two thoughts:
|
| 1) Vet techs have been some of the kindest, most patient people
| I have met. They are humans, which means some of them are
| nasty, but between the compassion fatigue, the relatively low
| pay for the amount of training, etc., I don't think "nastiness"
| is selected for.
|
| 2) Difficulty hiring is one. Difficulty firing is another, if
| they're at a state university. But there _is_ a national
| shortage of these types of technicians, and it 's not a job
| that can't get done.
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