Vivisectors vs. Vivisectors in a New Lawsuit

Wrap your mind around this one: InVivo Therapeutics Corp. is suing Oregon Health and Science University (notorious for its torturous animal experiments), but not as a group opposed to animal research -- rather as a business that hired OHSU to perform animal research. InVivo alleges that OHSU provided improper, substandard care to the monkeys in the study, but of course, InVivo is the company that happily ordered the monkeys paralyzed through the severing of their spinal cords in the first place, so there is no good guy in this lawsuit.

And really, let's be honest -- this isn't about the welfare of the animals for InVivo. It's about money lost. It's about business. The monkeys were and are merely tools, resources: "The firm alleged in a recent lawsuit that it was forced to abandon its medical study earlier this year because more than a third of the monkeys provided by an Oregon research facility suffered illnesses or injuries early in the research period." And those animals and the research on them had already cost InVivo a pretty penny. The Boston Globe article begins,

Some of the rhesus monkeys that served as laboratory animals for InVivo Therapeutics Corp.’s research into spinal cord injuries have to suffer in the name of medical science.

But the Cambridge company was not expecting the monkeys to suffer more than necessary.

This sort of language always makes me angry. The monkeys (who are a "who," not a "that," by the way) did not have to suffer -- because they did not have to be experimented on in the first place -- and none of their suffering was "necessary," not even the planned suffering. And it may make for good PR to pretend that this lawsuit is about InVivo's concern for animal suffering, but it isn't. InVivo is in the business of animal suffering. It paid OHSU for the express purpose of creating animal suffering. This is about money.

But whatever the primary motivations of InVivo, what does it say about OHSU that even fellow animal-research-happy institutions can convincingly argue that it's a cruel hellhole for animals?

You can read the details at the Boston Globe article here. While there, feel free to roll your eyes at all the talk of the Animal Welfare Act and what it requires and what the punishments are for violations -- what little it requires is a joke, what little it requires is almost never really provided, and the absence of what little it requires is hardly ever or substantially punished.

Please don't support the cruel and unnecessary institution of animal research; do support the alternatives.

And if the strong ethical arguments in cases such as these don't convince you, also consider the science, including, with relation to this specific story, for example, the following: "Spinal Cord Injury Research Hampered by Animal Models, Says New Study: Scientists Say Difficulty Lies in Extrapolating Animal Data to Humans."

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Photo courtesy the Empty Cages Gallery and Animals Voice