It may have become clear by now that many types of
experimentation performed on primates are highly duplicated. While
it is difficult to look at this issue in it’s’ entirety it is
possible to examine one small area of it. As was stated earlier in
this report, utilization of the NIH CRISP system provides access to
a listing of 75 grants funded during 2006 by the National Eye
Institute related to vision which use macaque monkeys. These
projects all examine the firing of individual cells within the
visual centers of the brain of macaque monkeys. The methodology used
in these projects is strikingly similar.
Why would duplication of this nature happen? What is the real
motivation? While the public is told that a certain level of
duplication is necessary in science, do we need 75 projects that are
all examining the same area? How could this happen?
As part of the issuance of this report approximately 50 grant
applications which have been obtained from the National Eye
Institute through the Freedom of Information Act have been placed on
the SAEN website at:
http://www.all-creatures.org/saen/grants-gov.html
When the front page of most of these grants is examined, it is
easy to find the financial information relevant to these grants. The
grant application for EY000745-34A1, of Albert Fuchs at the
University of Washington in Seattle will be used as an example. This
project has a direct cost of $378,994, and a total cost of $589,970
per year. The difference of these two numbers is $210,976. This
number is the indirect cost of this grant, and it goes directly to
the University of Washington.
The $378,994 in direct costs pays for the animals, the
researcher’s salary, etc. The indirect cost pays for things like
utilities, staffing, etc. During 2007 the University of Washington,
Seattle had 42 grants that used primates. Each one of these grants
has an indirect cost portion. If each one received only $200,000 per
year in indirect costs, then the University of Washington would
receive $8.4 million per year in indirect costs for these grants
alone. Now, multiply this by all of the grants that the University
of Washington receives for primates, dogs, cats, rabbits, rats,
mice, guinea pigs, etc. This indirect cost number would reach into
the tens if not the hundreds of millions in indirect cost dollars,
for this university alone. Now multiply this by all of the 903
grants for primate research (this number is almost certainly
incomplete because many grants use specific species names instead of
general terms like primate) by $200,000 per grant in indirect costs
(a conservative number) and the result is over $180 million in
indirect costs alone. This is a conservative amount for only one
species, and does not include the actual original grant amounts.
This high level of “indirect” funding is a powerful motivation
for performing as many experiments as can possibly be funded at each
and every research facility. Clearly, the project approval
committees of all universities and laboratories that receive federal
funding have serious vested interests in insuring that the highest
possible number of research projects are funded. These grants
provide a tremendous income stream for laboratories. This is not
about science or health. Primate research, like all animal research,
is about attracting grant funding. This issue is important not only
because of the waste of tens of millions of tax dollars, but also
because the Animal Welfare Act contains regulations regarding the
unnecessary duplication of research, and the simplest way to produce
more grants is to simply have many grants that do and re-do the same
project, or at best very slight variations of the same basic
project.
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