Experimentation
performed on primates at the University of Alabama, Birmingham is both
highly invasive and extremely painful and stressful for the primates
used in these procedures. One experiment deprives primates of water for
as much as 21 hours per day, 5 days per week. Another part of this
project bolts metal strips to the primate’s head, which supports a head
restraint post. Coils are implanted near the eyes. Holes are cut into
the skull and electrodes are fed into the brain and they are confined to
restraint chairs. This is only one experiment, but is typical in the
highly invasive nature of the procedures.
Primate health care
records from UAB reveal shocking conditions:
Primate 20680
– “The eyes are sunken in the orbits. Body condition is poor. Animal
is thin with little adipose tissue (fat) anywhere and little muscular
tissue on extremities.” Clearly this animal was so severely ill that
all body fat was gone and the muscles had begun to disappear. This
primate suffered substantially.
Primate 20694
– This rhesus monkey was so highly stressed by captivity that “he
was a self-mutilator who had an extended period of lesion healing and
reinjury . . . “
Primate 20754
– A Rhesus monkey who was extremely ill: “Animal in poor body
condition. She is both too small and too thin. The spleen is smaller
than expected. She has no detectable external or internal body fat.”
The lack of body fat likely indicates a lengthy period of serious
disease.
Primate 20772
– Another rhesus monkey who suffered tremendously. “He was noticed to
be lame with swollen left ankle.”
Primate 20792
– “The animal has minimal body fat.” – Again, this indicates long-term
serious illness.
Animal after animal at
UAB clearly indicate abnormally high levels of suffering and stress.
Lack of body fat, swollen joints, self-mutilation – all of these things
indicates extreme suffering for the victimized animals. Clearly, the
primates within UAB labs suffer tremendously.
