IDA Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Chimpanzees’

Credit: Yerkes National Primate Research Center

Yesterday, as Americans prepare to file their annual tax returns, In Defense of Animals unveiled its “Top 10 Reasons Why Animal Research is a Cruel Joke” in recognition of ridiculous and wasteful experiments funded by your tax dollars. Why now? Because, when it comes to animal research, every day is April Fool’s Day for American taxpayers.

IDA’s “Top 10” list was selected from the “cream of the scientific crop”: National Institutes of Health-funded experiments that were selected from scientific papers published in 2009 and 2010 (and one from 2008), approved by federally-mandated oversight committees, and published in peer-reviewed journals.  Yet, these experiments add nothing to medical progress and tell us nothing we care to know.  Here are a few examples of experiments that made the Top 10 list:

Warning:  Entire List Contains Graphic and/or Sexual Content

• Female rats might enjoy vaginal stimulation (Dartmouth)
• Mice need only  wheel, not shocks, for  wheel-running (University of North Carolina)
• Baby chimpanzees need nurturing (Emory University/Yerkes National Primate Center)
• Trapped rats freak out (San Diego State Univ., Colorado State Univ., Univ. of Arizona)
• Lizards forced to fight get stressed and then decapitated (Harvard and Univ. of South Dakota)
• Castrated monkeys are less dominant (NIH’s internal intramural labs in Bethesda, Maryland)

These experiments are just the tip of the iceberg of waste in biomedical animal research and the Top 10 list is just the beginning of IDA’s Ridiculous Research campaign.  IDA will continue to expose experiments like these on a regular basis in order to demonstrate that archaic and absurd animal experiments funded by your tax dollars are being conducted every day – not just April’s Fool Day.

Click here to read the entire list and learn more about what you can do to help these animals!

This is Baker, a squirrel monkey who was one of the first animals to survive a NASA spaceflight. Photo Credit : NASA

On Tuesday, IDA released letters from seven celebrities opposed to upcoming animal experiments funded by NASA. The experiments are part of a study entitled “Long-term Effects of Space Radiation in Nonhuman Primates” and they would involve irradiating squirrel monkeys at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), a Department of Energy facility in New York State.

The celebrities signed on to the IDA-drafted letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr., and Brookhaven National Laboratory Director Dr. Samuel Aronson. Those who have signed to date include Alicia Silverstone, James Cromwell, Zachary Quinto, Allison Janney, Woody Harrelson, Kristen Bell, Emily Deschanel, and Elizabeth Perkins. Click here to send your own message to Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

NASA’s proposed experiment would expose these tiny monkeys – only a foot tall – to one massive burst of gamma radiation equal to a three-year journey to Mars and back. Since the 1950s, thousands of monkeys have been exposed to various dosages of radiation, including radio frequency, microwave, X-ray, gamma, electron, proton, neutron and other particle radiation. Scientists have already shown that gamma radiation can cause depressive behavior, immobility, hyperirritability, convulsions, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, hair loss, open sores, skin hemorrhages, and even death.

Previous research has also proven that animals of different species – even of different strains of the same species – react differently to radiation, which calls into question the proposed experiment’s scientific value for human astronauts. These objections and more were included in an official complaint to NASA and BNL sent jointly by IDA and the International Primate Protection League (IPPL). IDA’s anti-vivisection team worked with Shirley McGreal of IPPL on the complaint – challenging the experiments on scientific grounds and citing fatal flaws, such as redundancy, species differences, and available alternatives already in use.

NASA has already committed $1.75 million in taxpayer money to the experiment. BNL is expected to conduct the radiation portion of the experiment, but BNL has not yet made the final decision on whether it will do so. According to conversations with PR officials at BNL, the experiment is currently being reviewed by BNL’s safety, science, and animal welfare committees. If you have not already done so, please take the time to send a letter condemning these experiments to Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

Thanks for standing with us against these experiments. We will provide updates when we know more.

It is with rapt fascination that a photograph of a deceased chimpanzee being visibly mourned by dozens of chimpanzees looking on as the body is being wheeled for burial has transfixed viewers across the Internet, on television, and in countless publications, with its soul-piercing sadness. The image of the matriarch Dorothy, lying still amid orphaned chimpanzees at Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, in Cameroon, Africa, is something wondrous to behold. The Sanaga-Yong Center, which provides sanctuary for nearly 70 orphans, victims of the illegal bushmeat trade, is a project of IDA Africa, the creation of In Defense of Animals’ Dr. Sheri Speede. who first traveled to the country to volunteer her veterinary skills. She made friends with three chimpanzees, Becky, Jacky, and Pepe—who had suffered decades in small cages at a resort hotel and, in 1999, became the first adult chimpanzees who had been rescued in Cameroon. In 2000, IDA Africa organized a forced confiscation of adult chimpanzees Dorothy and Nama, and eight monkeys, the first armed confiscation of illegally held primates in Cameroon.

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