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Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!
S. A. E. N.
"Exposing the truth to wipe out animal experimentation"

Articles and Reports

Government Propaganda – Misleading the American People Concerning Primate Experimentation
By Michael A. Budkie, A.H.T., Executive Director, SAEN

VI. Conclusion

This report was spawned by recent discussions in mass media regarding a request for increased funding for the Primate Center System. Associated with this funding request were assurances that the researchers "follow stringent ethical guidelines" and that the research performed in these facilities is worthwhile. The experimentation is necessary, and cannot be performed any other way. We were also told that the Primate Centers were incapable of producing even the 2000 primates needed for AIDS research, let alone the increased needs of the biomedical community for anti-terrorism experimentation.

However, this document has graphically demonstrated that the primates within these laboratories, and other primate facilities across the U.S. do not care for the animals sufficiently. Primates are dying of dehydration, wasting disease, and are housed in such a way as to cause substantial numbers of them to become insane. Laws are being broken by the very laboratories who are asking for yet more of our tax dollars.

The laboratories cannot even seem to report the numbers of primates that they have on hand with any level of accuracy, and the government agency charged with supervising them cannot seem to either enforce the laws governing animal experimentation, or even produce reports which accurately count the primates within labs. And the officials functioning as spokespersons for the system have used inaccurate, if not dishonest information when making their plea for further funding.

Additionally, this report has demonstrated that the primate centers in particular, and the overall system of primate experimentation as it is supported by the National Institutes of Health is riddled with duplication, redundancy, and unnecessary experimentation.

The Primate Center system already receives over $330 million per year for experimentation. These laboratories have not developed any cures for diseases. They have not saved human lives. In fact, they have squandered funding that could have been used to provide programs which could have directly benefited human beings, other than those paid to perform this research.

Before these facilities receive any more funding, they are first obligated to demonstrate that they need to exist at all. They have produced a tremendous flow of redundant experimentation whose publications are used primarily to justify yet more experimentation. The really relevant question is: Should the Primate Centers be allowed to exist at all?

Go on to VII. Call for Access to Laboratories
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