Washington, D.C. National Zoo Director Lucy Spelman

The death of any rare and valued zoo animal is bound to be a cause for concern, not only among animal-lovers, but also among the millions of Americans for whom zoos afford the only contact with myriad creatures not found in any other domestic habitat. When the loss is that of Ryma, a seventeen-year-old giraffe, who had spent most of its life in the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and had recently given birth to one of few giraffes successfully bred in captivity, the sense of deprivation is certain to be magnified several fold.

Soon after Ryma's death, a Washington Post reporter sought access to the relevant medical records, including necroscopy and pathology reports. To the reporter's amazement, an e-mail from National Zoo director Lucy Spelman flatly refused access to the records which had been requested. Even more startling were the reasons given for such a rebuff.

Releasing such records, Spelman declared, would violate the late giraffe's right of privacy. "The privacy rules that apply to human medical records, and to the physician-patient relationship," Spelman explained, "do not apply in precisely the same way to animal medicine at a public institution like the National Zoo. But we believe they do in principle." Lest there be any doubt about the rationale for withholding such materials, Spelman continued: "The core of veterinary medicine [as in human medicine] is the client-patient [keeper or curator-zoo animal] relationship," adding that "the medical record is essentially a written history of this relationship, but it is not written in a style or format geared toward the public." Indeed, the format issue also affected the Zoo's posture; Spelman added that the general public would be incapable of understanding such information, and claimed that the release of the requested reports might disrupt scientific research.

Although Dr. Spelman is a widely respected veterinarian, and has struggled with a host of other challenges (including the mysterious deaths of another giraffe and several other animals), invoking so tenuous a basis for withholding timely and important information from the press and public-and specifically for claiming that Washington Post readers could not understand scientific data in the autopsy report of a giraffe-contravenes the Jeffersonian principle that an informed citizenry is the strongest bulwark of a democracy , and clearly merits a 2003 Jefferson Muzzle.