Kategorie: Animals

Yesterday, a workshop convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) as part of a congressional mandate to review the current state and future use of primates in experimentation turned into an expensive, taxpayer-funded gathering dominated by primate experimenters, commercial suppliers, and lobbyists who profit from the primate experimentation industry.

The study—requested by Congress and commissioned by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—was intended to identify areas in which primate experiments could be eliminated in NIH’s intramural program. The workshop—which is expected to provide the same level of independent, broad scrutiny as a similarly convened committee did for chimpanzees in 2011—opened with a statement that ethical considerations are outside the purview of the committee, even though they were the impetus for the study in the first place. Not surprisingly, rather than discussing opportunities to reduce or eliminate the use of primates in laboratories, this group of primate experimentation profiteers concluded that they need more money and more monkeys—a lot more money and a lot more monkeys.

The committee opted not to discuss the harm associated with animal experimentation, the high translational failure rate of these experiments, or the industry’s complicity in the growing illegal capture, international importation, and transport of the most commonly used monkey species, which has contributed to the recent elevated classification of long-tailed macaques and pig-tailed macaques from “vulnerable” to “endangered.”

At this “public” workshop, dissenting voices were not welcomed or solicited. Instead, the workshop rolled out the red carpet for the very people who rake in millions of taxpayer dollars selling monkeys, tormenting and killing monkeys, and lobbying for experimenting on monkeys. Many panelists complained that they didn’t have enough monkeys, but when asked by other panelists for hard evidence of this shortage, you could hear crickets chirping.

It’s a dark day when NASEM—esteemed as a body that’s supposed to provide “independent, objective advice to inform policy with evidence, spark progress and innovation, and confront challenging issues for the benefit of society”—chooses to make a mockery of an important study by embedding itself with entities that have vested interests and no intention of investigating a controversial issue fairly but only want to further entrench the status quo.

For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding federal documents that reveal serious animal welfare violations at the Hercules-based contract testing laboratory Pacific BioLabs.

Injecting animals with experimental compounds and rubbing substances into their raw, abraded skin is business as usual for Pacific BioLabs, but incompetence and a culture of disregard add to the animals’ suffering. According to a just-posted federal inspection report obtained by PETA, employees injected two rabbits with a chemical at full concentration—although the protocol required that it be diluted. Although the error was noticed, the veterinarian was not notified and the rabbits were left to suffer overnight. The following day, they had to be euthanized.

Pacific BioLabs has previously been cited for running afoul of animal welfare laws. Just last year, two guinea pigs who had been used in a “dermal sensitization” test were found to have deep wounds, measuring 2 inches by half an inch, in their flesh. PETA recently obtained photos of the animals’ condition via a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The rabbits, guinea pigs, and other animals in Pacific BioLabs’ facility feel pain and value their lives just as much as any of the company’s executives, and it would do well to modernize its operations by ending cruel and archaic animal tests and using only sophisticated, human-relevant research methods, such as those described in PETA scientists’ groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal.

For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.