Thursday, May 24, 2007

UNM's Attorneys Hid Lab Results

By Jim Ludwick
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer

    Attorneys at the University of New Mexico tried to hide information about lab animals squealing in pain, aborting their young and reacting to electric shocks during controversial experiments that have come under fire.
    Graphic descriptions of the experiments were crossed out when the Journal was given a report from the university's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, requested by the newspaper under the state's open-records law.
    The Journal later obtained an unedited copy of the report.
    David Harris, acting president of UNM, said Wednesday that he regrets the decision to redact the information, made by the legal office without his knowledge.
    Harris said he was unaware of the redactions until they were pointed out to him by the Journal.
    He said attorneys "absolutely" went too far in an effort to protect UNM. "You're going to get these kinds of protective reactions from lawyers," he said.
    The report centered on a high school student's experiments that subjected animals to pain and fear for a science fair project on the study of hopelessness and depression.
    An investigation by the internal committee concluded that the experiments violated federal guidelines and had not been properly approved.
    When UNM provided a copy of the report, portions had been redacted to protect information such as the names of students.
    But a comparison to an unedited copy revealed that UNM withheld not only names but details about the reaction of animals to pain and fear.
    Attorneys, for example, had redacted the information that pregnant mice, put into dirty rat cages as part of the research project, had been so terrified that they sometimes aborted and at other times killed their babies.
    Researchers found it "amazing how the pregnant mice tried to leap out of the rat cages," says a portion of the redacted material.
    During electric shock experiments, researchers "could hear the mice jump every time they were shocked until they stopped jumping and just huddled in the corner," says more of the redacted material.
    The mice "produced intense squeals" when shocked, and researchers "could hear the mice jumping and scratching in reaction to the shocks even when not watching them," says another segment that was crossed out.
    Harris said UNM attorneys, "in their attempts to protect the university, went too far. It's regrettable, and I'm going to make changes.
    "There is not going to be this kind of editing of public documents without upper management review, and there needs to be a rationale," Harris said.
    Patrick Apodaca, university counsel, acknowledged that his office made the redactions.
    He said they were defendable under the legal principle of "executive privilege," which protects certain information exchanged by executives during a decision-making process.
    The principle applies to this situation, he said, because redacted material stemmed from information provided to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee during testimony.
    "Embarrassment to the university was not even a factor" in making the redactions, Apodaca said.
    Robert Johnson of the Foundation for Open Government said the explanation is "nonsense."
    "He's just stretching to find an excuse," Johnson said.
    He said executive privilege might cover certain communications between the governor and Cabinet members, but "it doesn't cover redacting passages about animal torture."
    Guidelines distributed by the Attorney General's Office say executive privilege "may not be used unless revelation of a particular document will truly compromise the agency's decision-making process, and thus outweighs the public's interest in disclosure."
    It also says the principle "does not protect communications between an agency and members of the public or others not employed in the executive branch." Key testimony leading to the committee's report came from a medical student.

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Posted with permission of the Albuquerque Publishing Company.