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Suspended Ohio State SM Research Grant Report
By Carol Williams, ACKCSC, Inc. President
The ACKCSC Charitable Trust Board of Trustees is very
sorry to report that the Ohio State University Syringomyelia
research has been suspended and will not be completed.
The Charitable Trust in conjunction with the AKC Canine
Health Foundation (AKC/CHF), helped to fund this
research along with other unknown contributors. This was
the first research grant that we were able to fund and
we were all very excited about the opportunity to do so.
When we heard that the principal research investigator,
Carley Abramson, DVM, was leaving Ohio State, we were
very concerned but then Dr. Phillip March who had been
the co-investigator, took over the research. It soon
became known that Dr. March was also leaving Ohio State.
This was very distressing but we were all hoping for a
final report of the research from Dr. March. This did
not happen.
Confidentiality during research is vital. Any time a
grant is funded we must sign a confidentiality statement
saying that we will not release information from the
interim progress reports (2) that we receive. We can
only release FINAL reports. If we were to go contrary to
the confidentiality statements we sign I don’t think any
researcher or research facility in the world would want
to work with us. Some independent researchers who have
released progress reports as they go along have
encountered some real problems with credibility because
when they released their reports their investigation and
research conclusions were not complete. Therefore, they
would report findings and then six months later, release
another report that would be substantially different
because when they are in the middle of researching the
findings and/or conclusions could change. The good news
is that this study was not a total loss. The information
being held at Ohio State may be shared at some time in
the future – but only with another qualified research
facility. So we have not lost the samples and the
information that was gleaned up to the point of the
research being suspended.
The other good news is that we were able to get a
substantial refund that will go toward helping us fund
other research in the future.
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