Abuse of Primates in Research Labs Exposed on ABC Tonight

The animal rights blogosphere is buzzing today about the episode of Nightline that will air tonight at 11:35 EST, featuring an undercover investigation of a research lab that experiments on primates. You can read the story on ABC's Web site--"Ex-Employees Claim 'Horrific' Treatment of Primates at Lab: Hidden-Camera Investigation Goes Behind Closed Doors at New Iberia Research Center"--in advance of watching the program tonight.

"Nightline" obtained the results of a nine-month undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States. A Humane Society investigator took a hidden camera inside the New Iberia Research Center for most of 2008. The video shows what the Society says is the way monkeys and great apes are treated behind closed doors.

The New Iberia Research Center is a public facility, and its research includes contract work for pharmaceutical companies and hepatitis studies. The lab receives millions in public funding but limited public scrutiny.

"Facilities are very secretive in general," said the investigator, who asked to remain anonymous because of the investigation. "It's hard to get a lot of good information out of what really goes on. You rarely see images other than what is kind of posted on the Web sites. Going undercover in a place is the only way you'll see what's the truth."

Continue after the jump for more on the program and investigation, including discussion of the need to remember other animals used in research when advocating for primates.

The Humane Society investigator told ABC News that chimpanzees, often perched several feet off the ground, are shot with sedation guns, with little regard for their safety. The video shows chimps crashing to the floor.

"The sedated chimp would be sort of rocking slowly on the perch, then, out of nowhere, they just smack to the floor," the investigator said. "It was horrific to watch and to hear."

The Humane Society investigator who gained access as an employee shot video of a lab worker striking a restrained monkey's teeth three times with a pipe. The investigator says the employee wanted the monkey to open its mouth.

"The man is sort of threatening him [the monkey] with this pole and smacking his teeth at the same time," the investigator said, describing the video.

Another piece of video shows a lab employee hitting an infant monkey in the head and swearing when the monkey bites at her finger.

The program will include an interview with a former whistleblowing lab employee as well (who, for the record, supports animal research but is opposed to what she considers excessively abusive practices).

But the former New Iberia employee also makes remarks such as "I've seen rats and mice treated better than this," and the implication that it's acceptable or at least more acceptable to abuse and torture animals who aren't primates is something I'm not impressed with. In the preview, we also hear the ABC journalist ask a doctor with HSUS, "What is it about primates that makes them different, particularly chimpanzees, than other research animals?" And the doctor goes on to answer that question (or at least he appears to go straight into answering the question--but that could be a result of editing).

How I want to hear an advocate for animals respond to a question such as this (and how I hope this interviewee did respond), though, is to first explain what is similar between primates and other animals--to explain that all research animals experience pain, stress, fear, and more, to explain that primates aren't the only ones who experience the world and their lives in the complex ways they do. The general public is already quick to show concern over what's done to primates in research labs while quick to dismiss what happens to other animals, and that's not a false gap we need to see widen.

I've no problem with explanations of the degree to which primates suffer in labs, with explanations of how their complex intelligence and emotions play into their extreme suffering. But in these kinds of discussions, it's vital that we always remember--and highlight--the fact that primates aren't the only "research animals" who are capable of suffering, bonding, feeling fear and loneliness, and so on and who are regularly being abused and traumatized in labs. It would not be acceptable, for example, to stop experimenting on chimpanzees and other primates just to replace those experiments on primates with experiments on rats and rabbits and dogs and cats.

And I'm not saying the program tonight will go in the direction just described. I'm just noting that this is an issue we need to keep in mind.

You watch. I'll watch. And we'll discuss later.

---
1st image: Empty Cages gallery
2nd image: From current undercover investigation