Choosing the Underground
UW Lab's Pattern of Secrecy and Disregard for Animal Life for Self-Preservation
The University of Washington’s animal research has been a heavy source of controversy. While representatives have, on multiple occasions, claimed the lab has made significant progress — such as finally eliminating the use of live pigs for paramedic training after many years of criticism from physicians and scientists — the progress is at best exaggerated. Regardless, even this change, as positive as it is, was not the result of any efforts from UW. It took a long campaign by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. It required pressure from outside entities to force the lab to make the change. The lab has shown a consistent pattern: avoiding transparency while disregarding the lives of animals.
I first visited the lab during a student tour in 2018. The mice were clearly living in poor conditions, as were the pigs. When our tour group all heard dogs screaming and yelping in pain, the scientist guiding nervously laughed and tried to tell the group that the dogs were just excited because they heard visitors. He became skittish, quickly attempting to remove us from that area.
When discussing what happens to the animals after the researchers use them for experimentation, the scientist told us that the animals are adopted out. However, many animals are left in an altered state such that adoption could be a liability, so the researchers would have to euthanize the animals. This statement did leave out an important piece of information which, upon prodding the scientist, was relinquished: the lab regularly euthanizes animals even if they are viable. He attempted justification, citing the need to protect researchers from harassment from activists. He believed hiding the number of animals being experimented on was worth killing healthy animals. For the lab, image is more important than the lives of the animals they purport to care about.
After speaking to a student who has gone on a more recent tour, I learned that, since my visit, the lab has become increasingly paranoid around tour groups. They have become increasingly secretive. Now there is heavy surveillance surrounding any notetaking students engage in. Students can only use notepads and clipboards provided by the lab. Furthermore, all notes are taken at the end to be scanned or faxed before being returned to students. They told the tour group this was because the papers, if brought outside the lab could pose contamination risk due to the animal pathogens in the facility. However, this claim is dubious at best. They let tour groups wear their shoes from outside the lab into the lab, then back out without once applying even plastic coverings.
The visits are also very rushed depending on the animals being viewed. Aside from the mice and rats, they did their best to rush us out, especially when viewing dogs.
In keeping with their pattern, they claimed that they needed to protect themselves by not revealing the members of UW IACUC. Like with their decision to kill healthy animals rather than adopt them out, they alleged a fear of “harassment” by activists. But when so many of their critics are scientists, their choice to shield themselves from criticism. They for years kept any ethicists, lawyers, or policy experts off of the IACUC. And the only time they did put an ethicist on the IACUC, they removed her. Again, they chose to evade necessary transparency and accountability.
UW had to pay PETA over $500,000 for an illegal attempt to shield themselves. Specifically, UW “destroyed public records while under federal investigation.” UW would refuse to relinquish relevant “records and documents,” going so far as to “destroy[] videotapes and photographs of experiments.” The UW lab, even when under federal investigation, chose to hide its activities and stay out of the light.
Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, primatologist and former professor of UW, has since become a PETA advisor due to the lab’s animal treatment and refusal to embrace an acceptable level of transparency. She has explained that the lab has consistently failed to engage in good practices, stating that the UW lab is “the antithesis of good practices.” She explained further that, in its treatment and housing of the animals, the lab consistently ignores the “four C’s” of psychological wellbeing: comfort, companionship, challenge, and control. They lock the animals up, depriving them of any natural sunlight, and keep many of them — including primates — in isolation. These actions don’t just, as she explained, engage in “bad science,” but they show a lack of care concerning the lives of the animals in the facility.
The beginnings of this pattern — of choosing self-preservation and secrecy over transparency and animal life — began at the inception of this lab. As Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel stated, “they chose to put this [lab] thirty feet underground… They intended to hide it.” The lab wasn’t built with transparency in mind. They chose the underground.