It is clear from government documentation that the use of
non-human primates in experimentation is an area that is not
effectively regulated. The basic needs of primates are not met, even
in terms of food and water. Labs including: Yale, the University of
Chicago, University of Alabama, Pennsylvania State University,
Harvard, Catholic Healthcare (AZ), Brown University, University of
California (Berkeley), the Salk Institute, Stanford, the Smith
Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, University of Connecticut,
University of Miami, MIT, University of Minnesota, the University of
Texas (Austin), University of California (Davis), Johns Hopkins,
Massachusetts General Hospital, Wake Forest, Washington University,
University of Houston, Emory University, Columbia University, Oregon
Health Sciences University, the University of Washington, University
of California (San Francisco), Duke University, Princeton
University, Cornell University (NY) are all listed in government
records as depriving non-human primates of food and/or water and
this list is nowhere close to all inclusive.
Additionally, many laboratories have committed violations of
federal law that have either taken the lives of primates or caused
serious injuries including: University of Wisconsin, Madison; the
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (San Antonio, TX),
Alpha Genesis (SC), University of Texas (San Antonio), Emory
University, Franklin & Marshall University, the SNBL facility
(Everett, WA), Charles River Laboratories (Reno, NV); the
Smith-Kettlewell Institute (San Francisco, CA), and Vanderbilt
University. Again, the information available from the USDA is often
incomplete. To our knowledge only one of these facilities suffered
any meaningful consequences.
The National Eye Institute currently funds 75 grants that
investigate the processing of visual stimuli in the brains of
macaque monkeys. The protocols for many of these experiments are
virtually identical, elucidating an area of serious waste and
redundancy. Similar areas exist in other fields of primate
experimentation. Research facilities have a major vested interest in
promoting the highest possible number of research projects to be
funded as they receive substantial amounts of funding in indirect
costs for each and every grant that their staff produces.
The psychological stability of many primates held in laboratories
is open to serious question due to information both from federal
inspection reports and from internal health records for primates at
laboratories such as the University of Minnesota, the University of
Michigan, and the Medical College of Virginia (part of Virginia
Commonwealth University). The sterile and simplistic nature of
laboratory housing of non-human primates is designed primarily for
ease of cleaning, and does virtually nothing to accommodate their
psychological sophistication, often resulting in stereotypical
behavior, self-injurious behavior, and even madness.
Information made available to the general public by the USDA, the
federal agency responsible for regulating the use of animals in
laboratories promulgates deceptive information regarding the use of
non-human primates in labs. An examination of the number of primates
actually confined inside a set of laboratories utilizing a
substantial portion (app 1/3) of the national total (62,315 – an
all-time high) of primates used in experimentation illustrates that
these facilities confined 135% more primates than the USDA reported,
due to the fact that the USDA does not report primates that are kept
for later use or housed for breeding purposes.
The reporting of unrelieved pain in primate experimentation is no
more accurate. Projects that actually state that the primates will
experience pain are not reported as such, and other highly invasive
experiments utilizing procedures which have been deemed by
veterinary and scientific experts to cause unrelieved pain and/or
distress are not reported in this way. Lastly, while some labs do
report specific procedures as causing unrelieved pain/distress (i.e.
those involving precipitated drug withdrawal) other labs using
similar procedures do not report them in this way. The bottom line
is that, again, the total number of primates experiencing unrelieved
pain/distress is much higher than the USDA reports. This situation
exists because labs apparently attempt to avoid reporting projects
in this way and the USDA does not act forcefully to ensure that this
regulation is followed.
In the past correspondence/complaints to the USDA have primarily
fallen on deaf ears. Reporting has not changed, and if anything
enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act has declined because as is
exemplified in this report, meaningful enforcement actions regarding
significant violations typically do not take place. In fact, the
best information available is that regarding all of the information
contained in this report regarding Animal Welfare Act violations,
only one incident received any monetary penalty.
The bottom line is that the system is broken. Duplication is
rampant; violations go unpunished and largely unpublicized unless an
NGO steps in. The public is kept in the dark about the overall
situation, while laboratories continue to proclaim their innocence
in the face of documented violations – talking about the need for
humane care of animals in labs, while they die of negligence.
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