Investigation of ONPRC Reveals Horrifying Abuse of Monkeys Used in Cruel and Useless Experiments
The Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) imprisons 4,200 primates and receives more than $30 million a year in taxpayer funding to torment them in cruel, useless, and deadly experiments.
During a four-month undercover investigation inside the facility, PETA documented that monkeys were driven insane by laboratory conditions. The investigation revealed that the monkeys were confined to small, barren cages and lived in constant fear of employees’ rough handling. The following are among the examples of cruelty that PETA investigators observed at ONPRC:
- Sick monkeys received inadequate veterinary care and pain relief.
- Employees chased terrified monkeys in their enclosures and pinned the animals’ arms behind their backs to force them into transfer boxes.
- Employees used high-pressure hoses to spray water into cages while monkeys were still inside them.
- Monkeys were forced to pick their food out of waste trays beneath their cages.
Monkeys who were confined to small steel cages showed signs of psychological disturbance, such as frantic pacing, spinning, and rocking. Experimenters at ONPRC separate infant monkeys from their mothers in order to cause them intentional psychological damage. They impregnate monkeys and expose them to dangerous levels of nicotine in order to induce birth defects in their babies, who are killed and dissected after their first day of life. They starve monkeys so that they’ll “voluntarily” consume alcohol, and then they kill them to see the effects of alcohol on organ function.
Click to read about Judy Cameron’s maternal-deprivation and psychological-development experiments
The relationship between early-life stressors such as maternal deprivation and adolescent anxiety and depression has long been established in humans. Furthermore, researchers have noted that human anxiety disorders are complex phenomena and that “the chance of creating animal models which consistently reflect the human situation is quite poor.”1 The suffering of the animals tormented in these wasteful studies makes them both scientifically and ethically unjustifiable considering the human data that have been acquired on this topic.
Judy Cameron, an experimenter at ONPRC, separates infant monkeys from their mothers at different ages and under slightly different circumstances to see how it affects their development, behavior, and mental health later in life. As with the first 50 years of maternal-deprivation studies, made famous by Harry Harlow, deprivation causes serious psychological suffering for these animals. We have known for decades that the legacy of maternal deprivation lasts a lifetime.
Click to read about Kathy Grant’s alcohol-consumption experiments
ONPRC experimenter Kathy Grant starves monkeys in order to get them to “voluntarily” consume alcohol, observes their drinking behavior, and then kills them in order to study the effects of drinking on the body and “to determine the influence of genetic composition, sex, age, and stress on the risk for heavy drinking.”2 The results of one of her most recent studies are telling: The effects of alcohol on monkeys’ livers “compare well with the changes observed in liver function in human alcohol abusing subjects.”3 In other words, Grant is merely replicating what is already known about the effects of alcohol on humans.
Click to read about Elliot Spindel’s maternal nicotine–consumption and fetal lung–development experiments
The adverse effects of maternal nicotine consumption on fetal lung development have been well documented in human epidemiological studies.4 According to a recent study, scientists should be working to improve clinical monitoring and educational efforts in order to prevent prenatal nicotine exposure altogether.5 This is the only way to truly alleviate the problem.
Yet ONPRC’s Eliot Spindel has squandered more than $7.6 million in taxpayer money since 1992 for experiments that entail impregnating monkeys, injecting them with dangerous levels of nicotine, and then delivering their babies pre-term via Caesarian section. After delivery, the newborns are immediately taken away from their mothers, have their lung functioning measured, and are killed and mutilated in order to remove their lungs—all after just one day of life.
Click to read about Kevin Grove’s maternal-obesity and childhood body–weight experiments
The links between maternal obesity before, during, and after pregnancy and negative health outcomes in children have been well established in human clinical studies. The offspring of mothers who are overweight have increased chances of suffering from obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer (and a variety of other comorbid illnesses), and even attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
ONPRC experimenter Kevin Grove induces obesity and diabetes in female monkeys by feeding them a high-fat, high-calorie diet (which, according to our undercover investigator, consists of water, oil, lard, beef tallow, and butter) and studies the effects on the long- and short-term body weight of their offspring. This project began in July 2007 and is scheduled to run through 2011.
Click to read about Michael Axthelm and Scott Wong’s AIDS/HIV experiments
Twenty-five years of failed animal testing have shown that nonhuman primates are not a good model for AIDS. All of the more than 85 vaccines for HIV/AIDS that were developed using animals and shown to be safe and effective in monkeys have failed in human trials because they either didn’t work or were dangerous. In some cases, they made humans more vulnerable to the virus. As far back as 1987, renowned AIDS researcher Dr. Allen Goldstein of George Washington University stated, “The sooner we begin testing on humans, the sooner we’ll hopefully be able to develop a vaccine.”8
Yet experimenters Michael K. Axthelm and Scott Wong continue to perform HIV/AIDS experiments on rhesus monkeys. As a result of their experiments in which they infect monkeys with AIDS-like diseases, the animals suffer acute weight loss, major organ failure, breathing problems, diarrhea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and neurological disorders.
Many of ONPRC’s studies have no clinical application to human beings, and many duplicate old experiments that have been conducted and funded repeatedly in the past. In 2002, Good Morning America hosted a three-part series on wasteful taxpayer-funded projects titled “You Paid for It!” The series used ONPRC animal experimenter Judy Cameron’s work, which involved causing terror to infant monkeys with remote-control airplanes, as a prime example. Even today, ONPRC experimenter Kevin Grove receives $750,000 in taxpayer money per year to feed pregnant monkeys unhealthy high-fat diets and then scare their babies with Mr. Potato Head dolls.
In September 2008, PETA obtained internal documents from ONPRC that further detailed abuse and neglect in addition to that observed during PETA’s undercover investigation. These documents revealed the following abuses:
- ONPRC experimenters accidentally performed surgery on the wrong monkey.
- A pregnant monkey experienced a difficult labor, but the experimenter refused to allow the attending veterinarian to perform a Caesarean section to save the baby. When the experimenter finally allowed a Caesarean section to be performed two days later, the full-term baby was dead. The mother died days later of multiple organ failure.
- Many caged monkeys at ONPRC exhibited stress-induced neurotic behavior, such as cage-circling, self-biting, and hair-pulling. In one case, a monkey was described as having pulled out 90 percent of his own hair.
- Despite concerns raised by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors and a hired consultant, ONPRC continued to perform a painful procedure called “electro-ejaculation” on male monkeys. One monkey, Billy the Kid, was forced to endure this procedure at least 48 times.
As a result of an October 2008 PETA complaint to the USDA concerning the incidents above, the USDA launched an investigation and cited ONPRC for three violations of the Animal Welfare Act: failing to monitor animals adequately, failing to provide animals with veterinary care, and causing monkeys trauma, stress, harm, or discomfort. The USDA also issued ONPRC an “Official Warning for Violations of Federal Regulations,” which warns a facility about civil or criminal penalties if additional violations are found in the future.
Subsequent USDA inspections have cited ONPRC for repeated federal violations, including incidents involving a monkey who died of dehydration, monkeys who suffered excruciating deaths after being injected with unapproved chemicals, and nine monkeys who escaped ONPRC, putting themselves and the public in danger. As a result of its ongoing failure to comply with even the minimum federal standings governing the treatment of animals in laboratories, ONPRC was fined nearly $12,000 by the USDA.
In spite of federal sanctions against the facility, ONPRC continues to violate animal-welfare laws.
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