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 For the past 30 years, the Laboratory of Comparative Ethology, which
is run by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development (NICHD), has conducted maternal
deprivation experiments on hundreds of infant macaques that are bred
to carry different versions of genes known to be risk factors for
mental illnesses in humans.
Starting soon after birth, the baby monkeys are reportedly subjected
to fear, stress, and pain-inducing tests; half are separated from
their mothers to assess the effects of maternal deprivation.
In a December 22 letter to NIH Director Francis Collins, the
representatives – Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Dina Titus (D-NV),
Sam Farr (D-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) – point out that “prominent
experts . . . have raised questions about the scientific and ethical
justification of these particular experiments.”
“To date,” they write, “NIH’s various responses to members of the
public and Members of Congress about this subject have not
adequately addressed these concerns. In view of this, we are
requesting that your office commission a Bioethics Consultation of
these experiments . . . and provide us with a Consultation Report by
February 27, 2015.”
According to the letter from the Congressional representatives, the
maternal deprivation research at the Poolesville facility has “been
going on since 1983, receives millions of taxpayer dollars each year
and is currently approved to continue through 2017.”
A spokesperson for Rep. Farr told Reuters Health by email that
reports in the news about painful experiments on the baby monkeys
“are troubling” and Rep. Farr and the other representatives “are
asking for the report so they have a full understanding of exactly
what experiments are being performed.”
An NIH spokesperson confirmed that the agency had received the
letter and was preparing a response.
A spokesperson for Dr. Stephen Suomi, Chief of the Laboratory of
Comparative Ethology, wrote in an email to Reuters Health, “The NIH
is preparing a response and Dr. Suomi has been in touch with Dr.
Collins’ office. Dr. Suomi hopes you will understand, however, that
it would not be appropriate for him to comment outside of NIH’s
response to the original Congressional inquiry.”
Dr. Alka Chandna, senior laboratory oversight specialist for People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), told Reuters Health
there have been no publicly-documented developments in the treatment
of human mental illness resulting from these NIH studies.
Meanwhile, he added, “sophisticated human-based methodologies, such
as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have yielded
important insights into human mental illness and are paving the path
forward.”
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“Given the harm caused to animals, the experiments’ limited
relevance to humans, the substantial financial cost, and the
existence of superior non-animal research methods, the continued use
of animals in this work is scientifically and ethically
unjustifiable,” Chandna told Reuters in an email.
PETA is calling on the NIH to end these specific experiments
immediately.
“In light of the tremendous physical and psychological harm done to
primates used in these NIH experiments and the absence of any gains
made as a result, it would seem to be amply clear that these
experiments simply cannot be justified,” Chandna said.
NIH is currently supporting a phase-out of research using great
apes, such as chimpanzees, following a 2011 report from the
Institute of Medicine (IOM) that called most biomedical research on
chimps unnecessary. The IOM recommended that chimps only be used for
research in cases when there are no other alternatives, it would be
unethical to conduct the study using humans, public health is at
stake and the animals are kept in physical and social environments
similar to their natural habitats.
The congressional letter comes on the heels of a December 11 report
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on animal research nationwide
(available online here: http://1.usa.gov/1zirOhJ).
While the data show a 10 percent decline in the overall number of
USDA-regulated animals confined to and experimented on in labs
between 2008 and 2013 (from 1.15 to 1.03 million), the number of
animals used in painful experiments without any analgesia over the
same time period rose by 12 percent (from 76,400 to 85,300).
The USDA’s data tracks just the legally-protected animals – i.e.,
monkeys, hamsters, sheep, ferrets, cats and dogs – and not the mice,
rats, and cold-blooded animals that constitute the majority of the
animals used in laboratories.
The Animal Welfare Act, which is administered by the USDA, stops
short of requiring analgesia for pain in laboratory animals. It
advises experimenters to minimize the pain and distress experienced
by animals by means of appropriate use of sedatives, analgesics or
anesthetics - but it also gives researchers leeway to withhold such
agents when “scientifically justified.”
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