The e-mail that blew the whistle.
 Experimenters swear that they are well-trained experts who take good care of the animals they use. Our investigations have shown time and time again that just about anybody can call him- or herself a researcher and cut up animals—without any veterinary or medical training.
This e-mail message gives a chilling glimpse into the incompetence and animal suffering inside a Georgetown University laboratory. The e-mail message was authored by a lab technician who was trying to attach headcaps (devices placed on the part of the head where the skull has been removed so that electrodes could be implanted into the brain—see photos, right) to monkeys’ skulls and couldn’t get the devices to stay in place. Rather than seek advice from a veterinarian, she let the monkeys suffer while she sent a request for help over the Internet!
The e-mail was forwarded to PETA. Within hours, our RIR staff lodged a formal complaint with the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). After a thorough investigation, the government agency charged the university with failure to provide “a treatment plan for one of the macaques who was having problems with the headcap” and failure to establish a training program for experimenters and technicians. The USDA also found that the monkeys had no “psychological enrichment”—not even a rubber ball to play with—as required by law, to stave off the loneliness of life in a cage.
Staffers at Georgetown were so poorly trained that they resorted to soliciting information from a Web newsgroup to find out how to perform a complicated surgical procedure involving the attachment of a headcap similar to the one pictured above.
 • Let Georgetown know how disappointed you are by its actions, and ask what the university will do to protect animals and train staff in the future: Father Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J., Office of the President, Georgetown University, 204 Healy Hall, Box 571789, Washington, DC 20057-1789. |
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