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Newsletters University of California Labs – Statewide Suffering and Waste In the second half of 2005, SAEN staff led major protests and news
conferences which uncovered abuses inside laboratories across the state
of California. SAEN’s cutting-edge investigations revealed shocking
findings which garnered crucial media coverage. Internal records from the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA) revealed that primates at this facility suffer from serious
illnesses ranging from parasitic infestations to major bacterial
infections. Very often the bacterial infections are directly connected
to highly invasive experiments performed at UCLA. The practice of
experimenting on animals that are gravely ill raises serious doubts
about the scientific validity of UCLA primate experiments. Major
concerns exist regarding the adequacy of the anesthesia used in several
of the experiments. One experiment paralyzes primates for up to five
consecutive days. Additionally, the stress of confinement has caused at least one
primate to engage in self-injurious behavior. This is not uncommon in
laboratories that confine primates to small indoor enclosures. This high
level of stress also substantially alters the physiology of the animals,
such that they would not accurately represent normal primates, let alone
providing information that is generalizable to humans. Documents from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
clearly show that primates at this facility are suffering from severe
mental illnesses. Several of the primates at UCSF have begun to injure
themselves, biting and tearing at their own flesh or pulling out their
own hair. The stress from confinement and highly invasive
experimentation has taken a very serious toll on the primates at UCSF.
The highly invasive experiments performed at UCSF involve the use of
restraint chairs, bolting of devices directly to the skulls of primates,
water deprivation, and total removal of primates’ eyes. The plight of primates within University of California, Davis labs
was exposed to media using data culled from over 1000 pages of internal
university documents. Many of the primates at UC Davis are extremely
ill. One monkey lost 42% of his body weight in less than one month, and
this is not a unique situation. The experiments performed at all three of these facilities are part
of the most duplicated area of primate research currently funded by the
federal government. Over 180 separate grants support neural information
processing experiments in macaque monkeys. With the average grant amount
from the National Institutes of Health (the funding agency for these
experiments) reaching over $400,000 -- the potential for waste is
staggering. When all aspects of this issue are taken into account (the poor
health of the animals, the stress to which they are subjected, and the
excessively duplicative nature of these experiments), it becomes clear
that this is not science. Therefore, the only realistic motivation for
the continued performance of these experiments must be monetary.
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