|
Home Page
About SAEN
Articles and Reports
Contact Us
Events and Campaigns
Fact Sheets
Financial Information
How You Can Help
Make a Donation, Please!
Media Coverage
Newsletters
Petitions
Picture Archive
Press Releases
Resources and Links
Grass Roots Org. List
|
Stop Animal
Exploitation NOW!
S. A. E. N.
"Exposing the truth to wipe
out animal experimentation"
 Press Releases
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2002
Contact: Michael Budkie (513) 575-5517
John Hopkins' Ecstasy Study Irrelevant,
Harms Human Health, Says Animal Research Watchdog Organization
BALTIMORE – A Johns Hopkins University study announced this
week – and heavily reported by news gathering organizations – that
apparently linked permanent brain damage and Parkinson's disease to the
drug Ecstasy is irrelevant, and may actually harm human health, according
to an animal research watchdog group.
Further, recent government reports indicate substantial Animal Welfare Act
violations within the laboratories at Johns Hopkins University, including
mysterious deaths of research primates and violations of federal
regulations for veterinary care, according to SAEN, a Cincinnati-based
watchdog organization.
Regarding the Ecstasy drug study, "There is no guarantee that baboons and
squirrel monkeys react to MDMA the same way that humans do," said Michael
A. Budkie, A.H.T., Executive Director of SAEN.
"The neurotoxicity of ecstasy (MDMA) has been known for over a decade," he
added. "Ricaurte's research demonstrates little that is new," noting that
"human clinical and in vitro studies are far more relevant."
Ricaurte, Budkie said, is simply getting wealthy by doing irrelevant
testings. According to information available on the website of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), Ricaurte has been funded by the NIH
to study drug addiction in primates since at least 1989. He currently
receives a salary estimated to be well over $120,000 a year through NIH
grants.
Further, Johns Hopkins University receives more than $180 million a year
for animal studies, and is one of the top ten universities nationwide for
animal experimentation funding, according to a SAEN report (available at:
http://www.all-creatures.org/saen/articles-rep-anexp.html
).
"The recent furor over Ricaurte's experiments is just another example of a
grant bloated facility trying to justify the pork barrel budget it has
stolen from the American Public," added Budkie.
"There are literally hundreds of federally funded experiments wasting
hundreds of millions of dollars making drug addicts out of non-human
primates, rats, and mice, at a time when humans with substance abuse
problems can't access treatment programs for lack of federal funding," he
said.
-30-
Return to Press
Releases |
