Madeleine Pickens plans to withdraw money donated to OSU vet school
By Jaclyn Cosgrove
Senior Staff Writer
Published: February 23, 2009

The wife of OSU alumnus and billionaire benefactor T. Boone Pickens plans to send a letter today to the OSU veterinary school dean to inform him she’s taking her money elsewhere.

Madeleine Pickens said in an exclusive interview with The Daily O’Collegian on Friday that she made the decision to move her $5 million donation from the OSU Center for Veterinary Health Sciences after a veterinary student informed her of practices Pickens calls “barbaric.”

Pickens said she has learned the veterinary school buys dogs from breeders who have to follow less strict U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines; OSU then uses animals for surgical training procedures.

“Right now, when they buy these dogs, they bring them in, and they do a surgery, put them to sleep, do the surgery, wake them up, next day, put them to sleep again, maybe take out a kidney, wake them up again, put them to sleep again, maybe break a leg, fix it, wake them up again and then they kill them,” Pickens said. “That’s barbaric. That’s what you did years ago. Medicine has changed.”

Michael Lorenz, OSU dean of Veterinary Medicine, declined to comment when the O’Collegian called him at home Sunday.

Gary Shutt, OSU director of communications, said in an e-mail statement that the university appreciates Pickens’ “generosity and her love for OSU.”

“We always follow donor intent and will work with Mrs. Pickens to direct her $5 million gift toward the needs she identifies,” Shutt said. “We understand and appreciate Mrs. Pickens’ concerns regarding the use of animals in teaching and research. We evaluate our use of animals in teaching on an annual basis.”

Pickens said she made her donation in December but had not yet decided how she wanted it to be used. She still wants to donate the money to OSU, but not to the veterinary school.

After the veterinary student, who wanted to remain anonymous, contacted her, Pickens started researching the issue, she said.

She contacted Chris Heyde at the Animal Welfare Institute, an organization founded in 1951 “to reduce the sum total of pain and fear inflicted on animals by people,” according to its Web site.

Heyde, the Washington, D.C. group’s deputy director of government and legal affairs, said some universities have their own breeding programs, while others, such as OSU, work with outside breeding programs.

There are different classes of breeders, he said.

The Animal Welfare Act, passed in 1966, has specifications for animal breeders, he said.
With a class A breeder, the breeder knows the animal’s history and health, and the animal was born at that location, he said.

Heyde said OSU has been using a class B breeder.

This class doesn’t have to follow the same rules, he said.

Class B breeders are “people who buy and sell animals they did not raise,” according to the USDA.
“That’s what amazes me,” Heyde said. “That any school today would ever think of using these people.”

Heyde said he wasn’t sure why OSU would use a class B breeder other than possibly because of convenience or cost.

Pickens has also been working with Skip Trimble, an attorney in Dallas who is interested in animal welfare issues.

The three — Pickens, Trimble and Heyde — had come to the OSU campus to discuss other veterinary school issues when the anonymous veterinary student informed Pickens about the practices Pickens called “barbaric.”

Trimble said they talked with OSU officials about alternatives to the current methods. For example, OSU could offer free surgeries for pets in the community.

Meanwhile, Heyde said OSU is one of the few schools in the nation that does not offer alternatives to using animals bought from breeders for surgical training procedures.

Pickens said she thinks a solution is for the veterinary school to reach out to not only the community but also to the rest of Oklahoma.

Using her donation, OSU could open a clinic for less fortunate people to take their animals when they might not otherwise be able to afford health care for their pets, she said.

“I think it’s a fabulous opportunity for OSU to build a great relationship with Oklahoma — not just with Stillwater but to the surrounding towns as well,” she said. “There are people that don’t have a lot of money, love their animals, (but the animals) get cancer, they have a heart condition, they have kidney failure.”

Pickens said she hasn’t been able to hear from students, yet.

She said that if students want to speak out, they should contact OSU President Burns Hargis or Lorenz to tell them their concerns.

“I’m very much focused on OSU changing its ways with the vet school, and I’m hoping that students get involved in this and say, ‘You know what? We have an opinion, too, and we don’t agree with this,’ she said.

“And they shouldn’t be afraid to come forward and say, ‘You know what? We can change this. We care about our school. We care about Oklahoma, and we want to make a difference.’”