Veterinarians and veterinary technicians face a number of ethical dilemmas, from declawing cats to practicing euthanasia. But Susan E. Kopp says those issues are not often dealt with in veterinary education, and graduates begin work without sufficient reflection about them.
So when Dr. Kopp, a professor in La Guardia Community College’s veterinary-technology program, became eligible for a sabbatical, she applied to be a visiting scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. She wanted to work with other academics exploring the implications of biomedical and technological research.
She is the first community-college professor and first veterinarian to visit the Yale center as a scholar. During her six-month sabbatical, which began in January, she is examining veterinary ethics with regard to animal pain and distress. Her special interest is in how ecological-habitat destruction and farm encroachment physically harm animals like wild gazelles and antelopes.
Dr. Kopp, who is 50, says those animals experience pain when they are killed on roadways or die as a result of ingesting toxins. She says there should be more research on the ethical implications of habitat destruction and farming on animals.
As animal welfare, ecology, and environmental ethics grow in importance globally, she says, scholars in those fields, and in the social sciences, philosophy, and religious studies, need an animal-ethics perspective. She hopes to provide that.
Along with writing articles directed toward scholars in those fields, Dr. Kopp participates in an interdisciplinary animal-ethics study group that meets monthly.
David H. Smith, the center’s director, says Dr. Kopp “certainly knows a lot more about nonhuman animals than any of us philosophy, epidemiological, and legal types do. ... Good ethics should begin with good facts, and Sue helps us with that.”
She has also established some “street cred” with the Yale School of Medicine, he says, leading the center and the medical school to interact in significant ways.
Dr. Kopp’s interest in animals began when she was a child. She spent hours immersed in nature books and National Geographic, and found salamanders and other creatures in the swamp at the nature center near her home in Norwalk, Conn.
A corner of her neighborhood became one of her favorite places; it had a pond, a swamp, and a patch of woods with a stream and a little waterfall. “The trees were so thick that you couldn’t see the sky,” Dr. Kopp says.
Before taking the job at La Guardia, which is part of the City University of New York, Dr. Kopp spent four years as chief veterinarian at Animal Care & Control of New York City. She had previously directed medical services at North Shore Animal League America, in Port Washington, N.Y., and was in private practice for 12 years.
When her job at New York’s animal-care organization became too administrative, she says, she was drawn to teaching.
The La Guardia job allows her to resume two aspects of her work that she missed: contact with animals, and training technicians and other staff members.
Dr. Kopp received her bachelor-of-science degree in biochemistry from Virginia Tech and her doctorate in veterinary medicine from Purdue University, and she completed course work in religious studies at an institute in Loppiano, Italy. She is a past recipient of a New York State Humane Association award for exemplary veterinary service.
She plans to bring what she learns at Yale back to La Guardia, where she hopes to challenge her students to think more critically about ethical issues, even though many have no clear-cut answers.
“The majority of students enter the field because they care deeply about animals, and often their compassion and training makes the difference as to whether an animal goes on to live a happy, healthy life,” she says.
“We, as educators, need to be sure we give them the support and training they need around key ethical concerns as well.”
