Funding
The Annual Progress Report for the New England National
Primate Research Center (NENPRC) with the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
contains many pieces of information which will reveal significant issues
within the labs of NENPRC. During this reporting year (2002 – 2003) the
NENPRC brought approximately $216 million to Harvard. The vast majority of
this funding comes from the federal government through the National
Institutes of Health. Approximately $0.7 million of this funding total
came from private sources.
The effect of monetary issues on animal experimentation,
and thereby the condition of the primates is difficult to assess. For
example, the center has ten projects (9 sub-projects of the primate center
grant and one independent grant) that deal with issues of abnormal
behavior in captive/isolated primates. Over 320 primates are described as
having some level of abnormal behavior in the abstract of one of these
projects. If these animals were not the subject of so many research
projects, which each bringing more funding to the Center and thereby to
Harvard, their situation might be improved. However, since potentially
millions of dollars are dependent on the abnormal behavior of these
animals, it is unlikely that their situation will change in any meaningful
way.
The area of addiction experimentation in primates is one
which bears mentioning in this section. Roger Spealman has four
independent grants which examine addiction in primates which are funded by
the NIH at the NENPRC. There are also thirteen sub-projects of the NENPRC
grant which fund research in this same area, by the same researcher. The
four independent grants total $1,032,210 in federal funding, while the
sub-projects are estimated to be worth $841,450. This area of research, by
this researcher alone, likely brings $1,873,660 to Harvard, with a
substantial amount also going to the researcher as well.
Spealman studies cocaine addiction in squirrel monkeys
and heroin addiction in macaque monkeys. This is a highly duplicated area
of experimentation. The NIH funds 76 projects which examine cocaine or
heroin in macaque monkeys, squirrel monkeys, or baboons. In light of the
number of projects which exist in this area, it is highly possible that
unnecessary duplication exists.
