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

Media Coverage

Animal rights group accuses Harvard, MIT of abusing animals

By Associated Press, 8/30/2001 10:14

BOSTON (AP) A national animal rights group has accused the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and nearly 50 other institutions of abusing animals in their research labs.

Stop Animal Exploitation Now has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate the research labs. The group alleges that each of the labs violates the federal Animal Welfare Act, which requires researchers to justify potentially painful experimentation done without using anesthesia on test subjects.

Neither institution has any history of warnings or violations related to animal abuse.

Michael Budkie, SAEN's executive director, told the Boston Herald that 94 percent of the 50 institutions his group reviewed do not accurately report painful procedures done on primates.

''They're trying to put a good face on highly invasive procedures,'' Budkie said. ''Some of these institutions have been doing these experiments for 30 years.''

Harvard and MIT perform brain-mapping experiments which require primates to be confined in restraint chairs with recording devices attached to their skulls, Budkie said. Budkie also claimed that they animals are often denied food and water.

MIT did not return the Herald's calls for comment. But Cynthia Lepore, spokeswoman for McLean Hospital in Belmont another organization that SAEN claims abuses animals said the hospital conducts its experiments on animals to better understand illnesses like schizophrenia or depression.

McLean researchers conduct experiments that subject primates to food deprivation, electric shock, multiple surgeries and restraints, Budkie said.

McLean also does not have any record of animal abuse violations or warnings.

Harvard spokesman Don Gibbons said that Harvard has a committee that ensures that procedures done with anesthesia are done appropriately

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