We are very excited to present to you our interview with Dr. Larry Carbone! Hopefully this will be the first of many interviews!
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| Dr. Carbone, left, with his partner David in Morocco |
Dr. Carbone is a laboratory animal veterinarian and self-styled veterinary ethicist in San Francisco.
Hi Dr Carbone! Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. Please introduce yourself. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?
I grew up in Boston, and fell in love with Cornell on a visit there --- at Cornell, I got my BA in evolutionary biology, then worked as a lab animal technician (while my BF at the time was starting vet school), then became a vet student, then stayed on as a staff lab animal vet, and moonlighted as a grad student (History & Philosophy of Science & Technology - the closest I could get to grad work in veterinary ethics). 4 Cornell degrees and 20 years in Ithaca, I finally relocated to California.
Tell us about your job. Did you always know you wanted to be a laboratory animal veterinarian, or what made you decide to pursue this career?
I was a teenage zookeeper in Boston, but worried that pursuing zoo work would mean having to move wherever the jobs were, a compromise that never felt good to me, especially in more homophobic times. In retrospect, decisions made from fear never seem like the decisions we should make.
I fell into lab animal care simply because it was available in Ithaca when my BF was starting vet school, and it got under my skin. It's intellectually challenging, gives a chance for species-diversity (especially in my Cornell days, with vampire bats, and goats, and reptiles and all sorts of things complementing the dog-mouse-monkey repertoire of common lab animal practice). Beyond that, I have this missionary streak - I felt, in the late 80s, that lab animals needed committed welfare-focused vets, like my first mentor Fred Quimby, and I hope, me. It's a great job for someone who needs to feel he's doing good in the world.
How do you identify in terms of the LGBTQ/Ally community? How (if any) do you feel that your identity has affected your school, job, and living location choices/opportunities?
Gay as can be, but got a rocky start in high school/college accepting that. That may be part of why I've made life decisions more on whom I want to be with, and where we want to be, and then found work that fit, than on going where the job of my dreams might lead me. I'd rather be doing the job I do now (which I love; a solid A-minus) in San Francisco, than the job of my dreams, which would be at some vet campus somewhere.
I've been as out as possible since my technician days --- I got that job because my BF had previously worked for my boss and introduced us, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that we weren't just roommates. When I stayed on as a staff vet, with so few out faculty (none, at the time, which was 1987), I definitely knew I had an obligation to be out, for students and for co-workers.
