Zoo Admits Mistakes in Animal Care

Officials Rebut Claims Of Ex-Staff Pathologist

The National Zoo has filed a formal response that disputes the claims of a former staff pathologist who said he uncovered a pattern of poor animal care, but the zoo acknowledges making numerous mistakes in treatment and record-keeping.

In a 63-page rebuttal sent to a National Academy of Sciences panel investigating animal deaths, Director Lucy H. Spelman challenged the assertions of Donald K. Nichols, the associate pathologist who resigned in November and then gave the academy a packet of materials accusing the zoo of poor veterinary care, mismanagement and attempting to hide its mistakes.

"Our goal as veterinarians has always been -- and will continue to be -- to provide the best possible medical care for our animals. Our intent has never been to hide information or cover up mistakes," Spelman said in a cover letter to the academy. "Instead of raising his concerns while he worked for the National Zoo -- and while some of these animals were alive -- he raised them after the fact in an inflammatory way."

While presenting a detailed response to Nichols's allegations of veterinary mistakes in 21 animal deaths, the zoo acknowledged a range of staff errors in caring for 15 animals that died. The mistakes included failure to keep complete and accurate veterinary records; failure to examine some animals in a timely manner; failure to perform tests that would have more accurately diagnosed some ailments; and failure to closely monitor the care of some animals. But overall, the zoo defended its veterinarians, who Spelman said share her "intensity and a passion for animals."

The response came as the panel is wrapping up an interim report in its year-long study of the zoo, which was commissioned by Congress last year after the accidental poisoning of two red pandas. Panel members have interviewed Spelman and other zoo employees, and their final report is due this summer.

Although Nichols said yesterday he had not thoroughly reviewed the zoo's submission, he gave no indication of retreating from his position. "In a very quick perusal of just a couple of cases, I have already spotted several inaccuracies and untruths in what Spelman has submitted," he said. For example, Nichols said, he tried to talk to Spelman earlier about his concerns about the death of a bobcat that was euthanized in November 2002 but was rebuffed.

For most cases cited by Nichols, the zoo said it had a record-keeping problem, not an animal care problem. It dismissed his allegations that the zoo had changed veterinary records in three cases to hide mistakes. The zoo said the changes occurred in two cases because the veterinarian was correcting mistakes or adding details, and, in one case, because the zoo's computer system crashed and an entry was lost.

In only one case did the zoo acknowledge that a veterinary error caused the death of an animal: a Celebes macaque. The monkey, Sybil, died after surgery in 1998 to remove an abdominal tumor. A pathology report said that the surgery, performed by Spelman, perforated one urinary duct and cut through the other, causing urine to accumulate in the abdominal cavity instead of the bladder. The animal was euthanized.

"The damage to the ureters was unintentional; it was a serious surgical mistake," the zoo said in its submission to the science panel.

In his 48-page letter to the panel, Nichols wrote that the mistakes he cited "clearly establish a pattern of longstanding and on-going incompetence, malfeasance and/or malpractice of veterinary medicine" by Spelman and Suzan Murray, the zoo's current head veterinarian.

Spelman, who was head veterinarian before being named director in 2000, has said Nichols's perspective was one of "hindsight," offered after the animals died. Clinical veterinarians, she said in an e-mail last month to Friends of the National Zoo members, "often try to solve difficult medical problems without all the information. This is neither neglect, nor error. Medicine is a puzzle."

The zoo's response to the science panel did not specifically address questions raised in a Washington Post series last month that found that neglect, misdiagnosis or other mistakes had marked the deaths of 23 animals in the past six years. The series found that records were changed or were incomplete in files on eight animal deaths.