To: Les H who wrote (1282 ) 9/18/2009 1:11:04 PM From: Les H Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1397 Yale murder: Demanding job, a divided lab With its cutting-edge facilities, the Amistad building, which opened in 2007, is a place where technicians dream of working. It is home to about 4,000 mice alone, Russell said, on a campus that also keeps hamsters, gerbils, cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, fish and monkeys. The washroom job is considered one of the toughest. It involves scraping dirty cages and loading them onto a conveyor-belt washer, and lifting 40-pound bags of food and bedding. On a daily basis, technicians must also make the rounds looking for green neon tags – the mark signifying that an animal needs to be euthanized. They take the animals to the basement, lock them in a cage, and turn on the carbon dioxide machine. "It is very easy to get attached to the animals," Russell said. "It wears on you." Clark's co-worker said the technicians "definitely do get a little desensitized." "But I don't know anyone who is bothered and upset on a daily basis," the co-worker said. The university provides counseling to help employees cope with having to kill animals on a regular basis. Clark was promoted to full-time animal technician, a position that pays $12 to $25 per hour. That job required him to serve as caretaker for the animals, moving them into clean cages and checking to make sure they were not dehydrated, sick or dead. Animal technicians must also be watchdogs, making sure that in the bureaucratic world of animal research, all documents have been filed and all ethical standards obeyed. They might remind a student to put on a gown before entering a room, or chide a researcher for failing to separate a litter of mice or clipping a mouse tail for a DNA sample, a practice the university forbids. They live in fear of being held responsible for somebody else's sloppiness; a single lapse like a dehydrated animal or unsanitary work space could mean weeks of disciplinary hearings. "A lot of them tend to view us as janitors," the co-worker said. "But we're more than that. We are policemen. We are there to make sure everything is done humanely and ethically." Some thought Clark went beyond the bounds of his position. A team leader in the Amistad building said that several of his researchers complained last year that Clark was rude to them, prompting the team leader to alert Clark's supervisor. "He would berate them for minor infractions," said the man, who requested anonymity. "Everyone enforces rules, but he enforced them in an officious manner." ... Russell and other technicians said Clark had significant authority in his position, and said it would not be strange for somebody in his position to directly call or send e-mail to students about their lab work. He estimated there were about 200 employees in two dozen animal labs at Yale, and that supervisors, particularly Clark's, did not have time to get involved in the day-to-day operations of the labs. While most technicians do not forge close relationships with students, they do get to know each other. They can spend a few minutes to a few hours together daily, depending on how many animals are in the lab room. Students said that relations between researchers and technicians were cordial, for the most part, although the technicians were clearly there for the more tedious aspects of any scientific investigation. "They clean and maintain lab supplies and prepare chemicals – it's a job," said Frank Liu, a post-doctoral associate in Yale's School of Medicine. "We don't have that much interaction with them."thestar.com