 A BARRELFUL OF RECORDS is what In Defense of AnimalsŐ Matt Rossell must now sort through.
IMAGE: CHRISRYANPHOTO.COM |
In Defense of Animals has its work cut out for it. The animal-rights organization got 113,000 pages of documents in 30 boxes Tuesday morning from the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
The physical transfer of those boxes dates back to 1998, when IDA first requested the records from Oregon Health & Science University, which runs the center. That prompted a protracted court battle over fees and redactions in the records. On Oct. 17, OHSU reached a settlement with IDA, in which OHSU agreed to provide documentation of animal care over seven years at the primate center in Beaverton, as well as pay $82,000 in lawyer fees incurred by IDA.
"The case law that was made in this case doesn't just benefit animal-rights activists," says IDA outreach coordinator Matt Rossell, who worked at the primate research center for two years and blew the whistle on alleged mismanagement of primate behavioral problems in 2000. "It benefits anyone who is going after any public documents of any kind."
The primate research center was later inspected by the USDA under the Animal Welfare Act and given a clean bill of health, but Rossell claims the law is toothless when it comes to regulating the animals' psychological well-being. He expects to find evidence in the 113,000 pages handed over Tuesday that monkeys are suffering in the lab.
"These animals are complicated and intelligent and very socially complex, and when you throw them alone in a stainless-steel cage, they go crazy," Rossell says.
OHSU says the records tell a different story, including the fact that 91 percent of the animals live in group housing.
"[IDA] isn't a group with the most stellar record of telling the truth. I have a feeling that their claims will be very different than the reality, because that's what history has shown," says OHSU spokesman Jim Newman. "These records clearly show that these animals are very well cared for."
The primate research center, which gets about $11 million in federal grants annually, houses 4,200 primates in its 350-acre facility in Beaverton. Researchers at the center are working on an AIDS vaccine in addition to studying other infectious diseases, reproductive health, obesity and neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
The center fought to retain its right to redact the documents before releasing them to IDA, removing names of employees as well as companies that contract with ONPRC and specific drugs used in studies.
"If you look at animal-rights groups nationally, some have a history of harassing employees and companies that contract with research facilities like ours," Newman says.
Both sides say they're relieved to have reached a conclusion in a struggle that has stretched over eight years, though the contention between OHSU and IDA continued to the very end in a dispute over what form the records should take. IDA claims the group requested early on that the records be released in an electronic format rather than using reams of paper. OHSU says the original agreement was for a release of hand-redacted paper records.
Rossell says IDA will set up a workstation for the daunting task of scanning and reviewing all the documents, soliciting help from concerned volunteers. And both OHSU and IDA will be making at least some records available on their respective websites (ohsu.edu and idausa.org).
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On the other hand, I clearly recall a special building that we were told NOT to enter the animal hallway/holding areas at, under any circumstances. We could only just go inside to check the holding room temperatures. The primates inside were dangerous to be exposed to because we understood that they had been introduced to a terrible virus or disease (AIDS? We were never sure). These primates lived alone. I'm sure others were isolated during different types of expirements.
I had never been confronted with working in a place like that before. I was asked if I was an animal rights activist before I took the job, I told them I wasn't (I had never given animal rights much thought before then). After a few months though, I knew it was not a good place for me to be and I resigned. My memories of that place still trouble me.
If I remmber right, WW ran an atricle about a man who had taken a job there as an aminal technician, and had videoed inside, etc. Maybe he could help shed some more recent light on this? I have my doubts about that any records they release...
Hope this helps.
I have worked in Animal Facilities and most animals are provided with better housing and more enrichment than the majority of pet animals that people keep. There are strict rules about how the animals must be provided for and housed. Deviations from this must be reviewed by committees with at least one outside member (usually from the community and not a researcher), justified by scientific merit and address whether there are alternatives to using animals before they are permitted.
Most of the cases of neglect or abuse that are found on activist websites are ancient history from before the current rules were in place or cases where individual humans have been to blame, not the entire facility or its policies. The work being done at the Oregon Center is addressing extremely important health needs. The reserchers do not take the lives of their research subjects lightly and they deserve our admiration, not the continued abuse and harassment that is being directed towards them.
The Spy Who Loved Monkeys http://www.wweek.com/html2/leada020601.html
Monkey in the Middle
http://www.wweek.com/html2/leada032101.html
Unfortunately, GSL's comments about animals in research getting better care than most pets couldn't be further from the truth. That is unless you think that most pets are given one plastic dog toy and left alone in a stainless steel cage for up to 25 years or more, have their tiny cage cleaned everyday with a high pressure hose while they are still inside, and are subjected to invasive experiments. That is exactly what many monkeys in research endure. And they often go mad from confinement, with large numbers of monkeys and other animals in research exhibiting abnormal behaviors such as hair pulling, circling and pacing, feces eating/smearing, urine drinking, depression, infant abuse, self clutching and in the worst cases, severe bodily injury from psychotic self abuse. Reading these articles will help illuminate that in greater detail, I hope.
And I wish it were true that these kinds of horrible conditions are ancient history as GSL suggests, but year after year, current undercover investigations around the world keep revealing similar and worse situations in lab after lab. Here are links to just a couple that have happened in the years since I worked at OHSU.
Covance, the worlds largest supplier and user of animals for research was investigated recently both in Germany http://www.buav.org/covance/
and in the U.S.
http://www.covancecruelty.com
And as for the comment about the Oregon Primate Center "addressing extremely important health issues" I beg to differ. At the Primate Center, they are by and large doing Basic Research, which is science for the sake of science. I saw one experiment there where they were measuring the urine output of a rhesus macaque because, according to the technician, "It has never been done before." They were finding that the monkeys often pee when a human enters the room.
In other so-called important work, OHSU is studying nicotine in pregnant macaques. Eliot Spindel has spent his entire career studying this, even with ample human data from the millions of Americans that have died of lung cancer. So researched and well known is this problem, that the tobacco companies were forced into billion dollar settlements to all the states for smoking cessation education. Money that very little has gone to deter teens from smoking but instead to other things, like in the case of 200 million dollars in Oregon, it went to OHSU for, guess what, to build buildings for more research. This is a bit ironic when it was misleading research on rodents in the first place that allowed doctors paid by tobacco companies to tell us smoking was that bad for us.
I could go on and on about the ridiculous research our taxes pay for at OHSU. Like Judy Cameron's work. She has a host of behavioral experiments that defy common sense. For the sake of my sleep, here's a link to a site that describes her work in detail and others at the OHSU Oregon Primate Center. http://whitecoatwelfare.org/
Oh, no worries GSL, those researchers names have been redacted. In fact, that is the smokescreen OHSU used to keep the public in the dark for eight years and the basis they made for claiming the documents would cost $151,000.00 to produce. However, the court ruled in our favor and called this amount "exorbitant" and ruled the high costs were not supported by the law or their own evidence and prohibited public disclosure of these public documents.
Oh, but if you wanted to know those names that OHSU says they need to keep secret to protect their staff from so-called "extremists", you can find them posted openly on their own website right here:
http://onprc.ohsu.edu/discovery/dspScientistsLanding.cfm?doc_id=102
However, I want to make it very clear that IDA's only intention for these documents is to share the monkeys records who are in taxpayer funded research with the public. These documents will reveal how OHSU's behavior program is not working, nor was it set up to work to prevent these monkeys from suffering. I know this because I worked in this department for more than 2 years.
[to the editor; this is not the letter that I wish to submit to the paper for publication. That is coming very soon.]