Death At Science's Hands

Is Mankind's Progress Worth Price Of Animal Research?

June 27, 1986|By Phil McCombs, Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Steve Wilson, a medical researcher, was driving an electrode deep into the brain of a living dog.

His Howard University laboratory, arrayed with beeping, blinking instruments to record the animal's vital signs, was as dark as the bridge of a ship. Classical music played softly. Wilson was attempting, with a microscopic electrode of drawn glass, to penetrate a single cell in the caudate nucleus sector of the brain.

The dog, a beagle, lay immobile on a wooden operating table, its body shrouded in a green surgical sheet. Its head, to which wires were attached, was clamped upright in a metal frame. The brown ears hung limp, the mouth gripped a plastic tube coiling from a tank of anesthetic.

A portion of the dog's skull was laid bare, disclosing a hole drilled to admit the electrode, which Wilson lowered from above by a mechanism resembling a drill press.

The beagle, purchased for $250 from a breeder in the Midwest, had no name, only the designation ''BQB4'' tattooed under an ear. Later, the experiment completed, BQB4 would be put to death. Wilson would administer an overdose of barbiturates, then fill the dog's system with fixative to lock the brain, as if in cement, so it could be removed and studied.

Now, like the commander of a submarine maneuvering by instruments, Wilson advanced the electrode through the murk of the inner brain. Green waves washed across his computer screens. A thrumming from the electrode tip reverberated from a speaker.

Suddenly, an increasingly loud thumping. ''That's a heartbeat,'' Wilson said apprehensively. ''See, it's getting worse. I think we're getting close to an artery right now. . . . Shoot! . . . It's contamination.''

He pushed past the obstacle, the beating sound fades. Then, low at first, a rising muffled roar like the ocean.

''It's a cell, '' Wilson said softly. ''We're getting close to one. . . . Now I've got to see if I can stick it.''

The cells of the caudate, in ways not understood, modify neural signals that affect motor control.

Intent now, Wilson leaned forward, fingers fluttering over instruments. He spoke into a recorder: ''Uhhh, we're close to a cell now. I don't know what it's resting potential is. . . . We'll go ahead and take it.''

The electrode tip entered the cell, then stopped.

Wilson tried to maintain the penetration while electrically stimulating other areas of the brain, prompting them to send signals to the caudate. The electrode recorded the cell's reactions.

''Okay. CX2 an area being stimulated. . . . Losing the cell! . . . Do it again. There we go. . . . Do it one more time. . . . Almost have it. . . . Possibly a little something. . . . CX3!''

Few issues stir the emotions more than vivisection. This work, according to Wilson and thousands of other scientists, is vital if they are to find treatments for cancer, stroke, acquired immune deficiency syndrome and other major diseases. Surveys have shown that Americans generally support this effort, though they may worry that researchers sometimes cause unnecessary pain and kill too many animals.

Members of the growing animal rights movement assert that it is immoral to cause pain or death to any sentient being, no matter how worthwhile the goal. Animal rights advocates -- some of them dressed in monkey costumes -- organized a motorcade last spring to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., where they demanded the release of 15 research monkeys.

For Wilson, a tall, bearded, soft-spoken man of 35 who does his research under an NIH grant, such protests are understandable ''emotionally'' but removed from the daily reality of his lab -- a grim struggle against human suffering.

Raised near military posts where his father was stationed, Wilson received a Ph.D. in anatomy from the Medical College of Virginia in 1978, then did post-doctoral work at UCLA. There he became fascinated with what remains his research interest -- the cause and possible cure of Parkinson's disease.

After injecting a dog with drugs to induce the tremors and slow movements of Parkinson's, Wilson monitors it for a week in ''a nurse-patient relationship.'' Then he conducts the electrode experiment and the final ''sacrifice'' -- researcher jargon for killing.

''You don't feel good,'' he said of the killing, ''but you don't dwell on it. You go in and you sacrifice the animal . . . as cleanly and as quickly as you can.'' He must dissect the brain, he said, to determine precisely where the electrodes recorded data.

Wilson lives in a suburban house with his wife, who is a dentist, and their daughter. They have no pets, though Wilson and his daughter recently found a wounded bird, which they nursed to health and returned to its owner. At parties, the scientist -- who teaches anatomy classes as a professor at Howard -- has endured jokes about vivisection. In private moments, he has felt a certain heartache about his work.

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