H 32°, L 7° | Tomorrow: 
H 17°, L 4°I am often amazed by the immense human capacity to rationalize and justify cruelty, exemplified by David Carter’s recent column (“Primate experimentation needs utilitarian approach,” Sept. 25). We tend to distance ourselves from difficult moral questions and place blame for blatant transgressions on a shadowy amoral “other,” like Al-Qaeda or Bernie Madoff. The trouble starts, however, when one has that occasional moment of introspective clarity and is startled to discover the grotesque nature of one’s own positions. While examining the status of primate research on this campus, I recently had one of those moments. The results weren’t pretty.
As a veteran of life sciences curriculum on this campus and a former research assistant in a lab that deployed rat and mice models, I for many years justified basic animal research by calling to mind its intended purposes. After all, novel information can be gleaned by the use of “lesser” mammals in scientific investigation.
In my experience, every effort was made to ensure that the animals were comfortable and healthy, at least until they were doused with carcinogens or gassed. It wasn’t difficult to convince myself that a little murine suffering in the name of progress was a small price to pay. But a brief look at the status of primate research on this campus was enough to make my stomach churn.
In the early days of chimp studies on this campus, Dr. Harry Harlow tossed infant Rhesus macaques into the “pit of despair” in order to develop a clinical model of depression by means of long-term sensory deprivation. Despite the appalled reactions these experiments generated from his colleagues, studies at UW continue to abuse their powerless subjects while operating under the auspices of dubious scientific rationales. At the Psychology Primate Laboratory on campus, named after Dr. Harlow, researchers conduct invasive — and often lethal — investigations of simian neuropathology, as well as studies involving the administration of substantial doses of alcohol or jet engine-style noises to pregnant mothers in order to gauge the effects on newborns. Our campus currently holds 2,000 primates for these and other research purposes.
Is all this cruelty necessary to advance our scientific knowledge? And if so, is it ethical? As more studies expose the sophisticated cognitive abilities of our evolutionary cousins, it has become increasingly clear that this type of research is neither necessary nor ethical.
The great similarities between the simian and human mind have made non-human primates coveted objects of psychological research, but with these similarities we must address serious ethical questions. These are animals that have language, emotions and advanced cognitive capacities. Emerging data show they have the capacity for love and metacognition — to think about how they think.
Undoubtedly, many on this campus — including many scientists — are able to brush off this criticism of primate research as the knee-jerk reaction of bleeding heart animal lovers who have an insufficient understanding of biology and basic research. Such a position would be tenable if primate studies offered invaluable assistance in the development of novel therapies and the expansion of biological knowledge. However, that argument is drawn into serious doubt once one considers the recent history of primate studies.
Vioxx, a once wildly popular arthritis drug, was recently found to greatly increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in users. Recent lawsuits have argued that an over-reliance on data from primate studies allowed Merck to claim the drug was safe. Not until it was clear that Vioxx was killing its users, and Merck had made massive profits from its sale, was the drug withdrawn from the market.
Non-human primates do not develop AIDS and all successful AIDS studies have used in vitro and in silico methods, without animal testing. Liver function in primates has proven to be too different from humans to yield useful results in a slew of toxicology studies and research into hepatitis viruses. Even in the neurological diseases, where one would expect monkeys to be excellent model systems, major breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research have not relied on data from animal studies.
So why do researchers continue to use chimps as test subjects? For one, they rationalize the abuse of these animals in the name of science, however insubstantial and putatively pointless their goals may be. It is also important to realize that the road to tenure and publication is littered with the corpses of animals sacrificed in the name of science. One can often add something “new” to the knowledge base by pumping a critter full of drugs and seeing what happens. Maybe I’m being too cynical, or maybe I know too many scientists.
All things considered, it’s time for students and faculty to earnestly grapple with this issue and follow the example of a handful of EU countries that have banned primate testing by kicking primate research off campus.
Sam Stevenson ([email protected]) is a graduate student in public health.
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Yeah, test on humans ONLY - preferably on those humans opposed to testing on non-humans.
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I hope the author signs up to replace the monkeys in research then. Want to talk ethics? How can you classify “greater” and “lesser” animals? All animals are created equal. It’s ok for the author to have worked with mice and rats because they don’t deserve to live as much as monkeys.
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Wouldn’t be surprised if psych tests showed animal experimenters had same characteristics as child abusers and rapists etc.
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First off I’d like to say that the Animal Care and Uses Committee on campus does a great job of making sure the research done on animals at the UW is as humane as possible. Second to the author of this article, if you really are that passionate about removing primate research from this campus, then you should first start by boycotting all medications completely. You don’t get to be vaccinated to anything, no antibiotics when you have an infection, you don’t even get to take ibuprofen when you have a hangover after a hard night of badger drinking. All deemed safe for use on humans through primate research. Also picture this, if you ever need surgery in the future…say to remove your appendix…you don’t get any anesthetic or pain medication, you get to be wide awake as they cut you open because those things were tested on primates. I assume no scientist takes joy in animal research, but they know it is something that just can’t be avoided in many cases.
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I believe the author was specifically identifying primate research on campus as the issue not necessarily the federally mandated pharmaceutical testing that occurs on a massive scale in Madison at the Covance laboratories. Regardless of the author’s stance, it is pretty clear that there are alternatives to primate testing that are equitably efficacious for determining the safety of drug therapies - it is remarkably ignorant to assume otherwise, like 11:31am. I agree that it’s hypocritical to differentiate between “lesser” and “greater” animals but lots of people are ambivalent on that distinction. In reality, there is little chance the University will close down the Primate Research labs any time soon because they make too much money that would just go some place else if the UW banned them. Just another case of over zealous liberal idealism. Still, it’s tough to blame them for trying.
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I’d like to know what testing 12:54 thinks is just as good for determining the safety of drug therapies. First is cell culture which only tells you if the drug is cytotoxic or no. Nice to use mice or rats but they aren’t close enough to us to truly know if the drug is safe. The answer is primates who are over 95% similar in makeup to human beings.
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There is not one sentence in this article that explains why it is immoral. The closest the author gets is saying that they can love and communicate. So what? Does that make it automatically immoral? Don’t think so. Why don’t you rewrite this article and tell us exactly why it is immoral? I got an answer, because you probably can’t. Thanks for trying.
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Protip: PRL doesn’t test on chimps. Chimps are too expensive, unpredictable, and most researchers don’t enjoy having their arms ripped off. It’s tough to scribble notes like that.
Maybe research before you write an article next time? Or is that above the Herald’s standards?
No love, The scientific community.
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“We tend to distance ourselves from difficult moral questions…”
Yes we do, and this article is a good example of it.
In an article on the ethics of animal research one would expect to find a moral argument, or at least a definition of morality, but there’s none to be found.
So what IS the moral argument for animal rights?
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Great article!
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The very fact that primates are similar enough to us to be useful in psychological studies means that we shouldn’t be using them for that purpose. How is it ok to deem something not ok to do to humans, but ok to do to another species that will respond largely the same way? Disgusting.
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I agree, down with western medicine! All one needs is prayer.
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I know animal research, I know human subjects research. Many of the human subject clinical trials I have been in have been extremely uncomfortable, one was even quite painful. But it is my choice to learn about both types of research and how much research is conducted in this country. I know people who have learned a great deal about all the facts and issues and still remain against using animals for biomedical research or using animals for anything at all. But for me, the more I learn, the more I support humane animal research and I know that, without it, there is no way we would be as far ahead of rising rates and new strains of infectious diseases as we are right now, and there is a lot more work to do, all the time. Immune components discovered in monkeys are part of drugs that people with HIV take to stay alive right now. We would love to have discovered these early immune components, when the body mounts its strongest response to the virus, in people. But we couldn’t — people don’t know they are infected that early. There’s more, much more. Try to get past all the animal rights rhetoric and learn the facts. The activists often say it’s cruel and it doesn’t work. All of the research I have seen, and I have seen a great deal, is not cruel. Doing nothing about rising rates of infectious disease would be cruel. In the last five years alone, new and effective SARS, marburg and ebola medicines have been developed through monkey research, thank goodness. As far as saying it doesn’t work? Often it does not work — that is science. The experiments based on studying your blood samples or PET scans or observations in the field over time didn’t reveal what you thought they would, or the results go in a different direction than you had hypothesized. So you publish your failures so that others may learn and you continue to work, on your science or your medicine. Many researchers I know work on animals and humans both; they go back and forth, with care and planning, year after year, to keep the work moving forward. They constantly work with their animal care staffs to improve nutrition, enrichment, housing, and more. That is the reality. Then over time, maybe 20, 50 or more years, they look back and see what we have all have gained from biomedical research: Polio vaccine batches are still tested on monkeys for safety today before being given to children. The RH factor was discovered in and named after the rhesus monkey in the 1940s and is critical in treating hemolytic disease of the newborn. Stem cells from bone marrow transplants are saving lives and pluripotent stem cells are being used to test drugs for toxicity and to model diseases. UW-Madison’s James Thomson perfected his research techniques in stem cells from monkey embryos in the 1990s before making his pioneering stem cell discoveries from donated human embryos. Read, learn, dig deeper, get the facts, everyone, please. Then feel free to disagree, but don’t take all the medicines and surgeries developed in large part from basic, controlled, humane animal research, don’t get your flu vaccine, don’t immunize your children, don’t be a hypocrite.
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I am not sure how the author can condemn primate research in terms of both ethics and misleading and inaccurate scientific extrapolation while not also condemning other animal research. Is not the murine response even less applicable to humans than nonhuman primates? Is it because they are small an fuzzy rather than primate like?
Mice deserve liberation from experimentation as well. All nonhuman animal lab research is unethical and scientifically a fraud.
Good article otherwise though.