UC Davis’ Dr. No : Most Experts Advocate Surgery on Healthy Animals When Teaching Eye Course; Ned Buyukmihci Disagrees

Ned Buyukmihci is building a home on 60 acres near here, where he cares for 150 stray or abused animals.

“I look at them as non-human kids,” the tenured professor at the University of California Davis veterinary medicine school said. “Each one has a story that helps you refocus on why you’re doing what you’re doing. It also makes you realize that what you are going through is nothing compared to what they have been through.”

The veterinary ophthalmologist has taken frequent solace lately among his peaceable kingdom of goats, geese, ducks, turkeys, guinea hens, dogs, a cow, a rabbit and five pigs. For while his animals roam freely, the bearded, soft-spoken, $58,000-a-year professor has been confined to a symbolic dog house at one of the nation’s most respected veterinary medicine schools.

The teacher’s problem started five years ago when he told his students, who call him “Dr. Ned,” that they needn’t learn eye surgery on live, healthy animals they would then have to kill. Instead, he offered the option of operating on cadavers, terminally ill animals or animals requiring surgery.

He provided these alternatives for three years while publicly supporting plans to halt the sale of pound animals to the university for research. In December, 1987, after an extended fight, the university removed the tenured, board-certified professor from his eye surgery course and seven months later started disciplinary procedures, which could have included firing.

Buyukmihci (pronounced Bee-yuke-muh-cha) sought an injunction against the penalties. Two months ago the U. S. District Court refused to reinstate him as eye surgery teacher, but it did order the university to avoid discipline until his case reached trial because he had demonstrated “a sufficient likelihood of success on the merits of these claims.”

It was an important victory, but Buyukmihci, 42, lamented the wearisome, demoralizing nature of the lengthy struggle.

“It has cost me acquaintances. It has cost me civilities among fellow faculty,” he said. “There are some people who will not say ‘boo.’ I don’t understand how they can do that.

“(It has been an) extreme burden. It’s highly demoralizing. It has blown away my self-esteem as a professional.

“The only reason I have any positive feelings coming here is because of the students,” said Buyukmihci, who continues to teach a non-surgical ophthalmology course. “I listen to their complaints about the administration. I’m sympathetic to their ethical concerns about learning without having to harm or kill an animal.”

Both sides seem entrenched, and the conflict apparently will continue at least until the scheduled trial in January, 1991.

“Probably the most important issue to the university is the authority of the curriculum committee and of the faculty to set course content,” said David Birnbaum, general counsel for the University of California.

“Dr. Buyukmihci made a proposal about content of one of his courses (to change the operating procedure). The curriculum committee rejected that proposal and made clear what the course content was to be. Dr. Buyukmihci rejected that directive and indicated his intent to teach the course the way he wanted to. As a result he was removed as course leader.”

The university started disciplinary proceedings after Buyukmihci was told that his course changes were unacceptable. Birnbaum said the professor issued students a syllabus outlining his view of a proper course. After his removal as course leader, he wrote students a letter calling the curriculum committee’s motives unethical, Birnbaum said. Buyukmihci also volunteered to try to persuade the new teacher to offer the surgical options he favored.

“I think the key concern from the faculty point of view was what they saw as abuse of student-teacher relationship,” Birnbaum said. “If he expresses his views to students in a way designed to convert them to his views, that is not proper conduct. . . . If a teacher is a good speaker, he can be very persuasive.”

Dr. Edward A. Rhode, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, said he also questioned the educational soundness of Buyukmihci’s alternatives.

Rhode, a member of the veterinary school faculty since 1951, said that students using cadavers miss important experience with the “handling of tissues” and “the control and avoidance of hemorrhaging.” He added that terminally ill animals are not always available when students need them for labs, and that it takes a “very long time” to train surgeons working solely on animals that require surgery because students can’t experiment with new techniques as readily.

Buyukmihci, a co-founder and president of the Assn. of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, thinks his problems developed from another source--his outspokenness on animal rights.

“(The) conflict over teaching and whether live animals should be killed . . . was a subject the faculty felt very threatened about,” said Fred Altshuler of San Francisco, Buyukmihci’s attorney.

“It is not coincidental that at the same time there was a controversy about the sale of dog pound animals to the university from Yolo and Sacramento counties. There were public hearings and extensive media coverage, and Dr. Buyukmihci was about the only veterinary faculty member who publicly opposed those sales.

“It seems clear to me . . . that the filing of disciplinary proceedings was in retaliation for Dr. Buyukmihci expressing those views.”

A former colleague of Buyukmihci’s agrees. “There is no reason to discipline him,” said Dr. Bernard Feldman, a professor of clinical veterinary pathology who recently moved to the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.

“I’m dismayed by it. I think of my (former) peers on the faculty at UC Davis as being among the best in the world . . . I do not understand their attempt to discipline (Buyukmihci) and . . . I think they are dragging their heels on alternative (surgery) methods.”

Regardless of who is right on this highly charged issue, Buyukmihci is at the forefront of a trend to stop the use of healthy animals in veterinary surgical teaching.

At least some students in experimental courses at the University of Illinois, Tufts University in Boston and Washington State University in Pullman are learning surgical techniques on cadavers or plastic models before assisting in surgeries on real patients during their fourth years.

These students generally get high marks from professors. Ann Johnson, associate professor of surgery at the University of Illinois, offers a typical evaluation as many of the nation’s other 27 accredited veterinary medical schools consider alternatives.

“As we explore it, we find it may be a much more valid or better way to teach,” she said. “We go back to basics and learn skills first and then move on . . . I think students are just as good or better than students who learned the other way.”

Buyukmihci would appreciate nothing more than success for those programs. Wearing a flannel shirt, blue jeans and running shoes, and sometimes putting a leg over the arm of his swivel chair during a recent interview in his crowded, windowless office, he said that questions about the “use of animals in research, teaching and testing” began nagging him shortly after he joined the Davis faculty in 1979.

“I found I could not answer them the way my colleagues were answering,” he said. “(Their answers) were often in a real defensive posture or self serving, or in the interests of maintaining the status quo. They were really lacking any introspection or clearly anthropocentric in nature.

“I just do not think humans are more important than any other life form. We all fit,” he said. “I simply could not say that if humans were benefiting from something, therefore it must be OK.”

As a result, Buyukmihci took frequent animal rights stands placing him in nettlesome opposition to colleagues and administrators.

One of the first conflicts arose in 1982 when he wrote to a veterinary journal that hunting is an inappropriate sport for persons whose profession centers on the care and treatment of animals.

Charles A. Hjerpe, director of the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at Davis, wrote Buyukmihci that “one of the best arguments against your position” is that 22 members of the veterinary faculty are hunters. “Do you want to antagonize all these people, and for what useful purpose?” the letter asked. “Wake up and smell the coffee.”

Another conflict with Hjerpe developed in 1986 when Buyukmihci placed publications of the Humane Society of the United States in a veterinary hospital waiting area. The publication “emphasized the need for humane treatment of animals used for research purposes.”

A subsequent memo from Hjerpe asked Buyukmihci to “voluntarily” refrain from placing animal rights or animal welfare literature in the hospital waiting area because it “is likely that many of these publications contain articles in which the authors take positions . . . contrary to those taken by the University . . . Clients reading these articles may thus possibly be misled concerning the University . . . stance.”

Buyukmihci also tangled with his colleagues in the legislative arena. The major struggles between 1983 and ’88 occurred when the state legislature, Yolo County and Sacramento County (twice) considered proposals that would halt the sale of pound animals to the university for research.

Each time Buyukmihci spoke out publicly in favor of the proposals; each time the veterinary school marshaled forces in opposition.

Buyukmihci noted the university’s reaction to his outspokenness with seeming surprise.

“My intention was never to be at odds with them,” he said. “It was simply to express my rights as a citizen and make the best case I could.

“This (discipline) was another way to try to discourage me,” he said. “I think that they had hopes that by scaring me either I would back down and discontinue speaking out or quit. Or that they would be successful in disciplining me and I would be fired.”

Buyukmihci vows that will not happen.

Although his superiors at the veterinary school say research and teaching on live, healthy animals provide valuable lessons for students and important discoveries for human medical science, Buyukmihci believes the research is scientifically flawed because of differences between “non-human animals” and humans. More importantly, he believes, it is ethically indefensible.

“My colleagues are trying to rewrite the history of this research, which is flawed,” he said. “They say we would be nowhere without the use of non-human animals in research.” But even if the research is good, Buyukmihci said, “my primary concern is morality or ethics. If the cost is harming or killing non-human animals, the result is tainted and the cost is too great.”