Home Page
|
Stop Animal
Exploitation NOW!
Media Coverage
Animals In Labs Abused From the Harvard Crimson Report: Animals In Labs Abused Published On Thursday, February 08, 2007 4:34 AM By ALEXANDER B. COHN Crimson Staff Writer A watchdog group accused Harvard’s research laboratories of being one
of the country’s worst violators of animal rights in a report released
this week. Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN) cited 32 federal violations by
Harvard in a nine-month period. The violations included cases in which a
“researcher strangled a primate through negligence, monkeys are deprived
of water, rabbits and wallaby’s receive improper anesthesia.” A Harvard Medical School spokesman, Don L. Gibbons, contested the
validity of the report, claiming that all but one of the violations were
reported because of clerical errors, and did not actually involve animal
abuse. The one exception was the incident of the asphyxiated primate, which
Gibbons called “an unfortunate accident.” In the experiment, a monkey was drinking grape juice through a hose
and “loved the grape juice so much, it stuffed the tube down its
throat,” Gibbons said. The researcher could only see the back of the monkey’s head and
didn’t realize the monkey was suffocating until it was too late,
according to Gibbons. But reports of other violations were the result of procedural
failures, he said. SAEN cited a Harvard lab for depriving monkeys of water, part of an
experiment that involved giving monkeys grape juice as an incentive. To
make the monkeys crave the juice, they were not given water—normally a
legal practice, Gibbons said. Gibbons said the lab received a violation because researchers did not
file the proper paperwork for the experiment which would have allowed
the monkeys to not be given water. In another violation which SAEN referred to in its report,
researchers did not note they had anesthetized animals such as wallabies
during operations in their procedural reports, Gibbons said. The use of
anesthetics or other implements to reduce pain during certain procedures
is part of the Animal Welfare Act. Michael A. Budkie, executive director of SAEN, defended the report.
“We’re very careful to base everything we say off government
documents,” Budkie said. “This is not even a new situation. Harvard has
a pattern of violations.” Harvard came in second to the University of Pennsylvania. Penn topped
SAEN’s list with 77 violations of the Animal Welfare Act, a set of
federal regulations enacted in 1966 and enforced by the United States
Department of Agriculture. Budkie said that other institutions with more registered lab animals
than Harvard received fewer violations, such as the University of
Wisconsin. SAEN has cited Harvard in the past for its federal violations. With research institutions taking in millions of dollars, Budkie said
the penalties are “just a part of doing business.” Fines are set in the four- to five-figure range, according to the
Animal Welfare Act. “When they know they are not going to be penalized, what motivation
do they have to pay attention to regulation?” Budkie asked.
|
