PETA’s ‘10 Worst Laboratories’ List

6. Harvard University  
Harvard is used to being at the top of university rankings, but this year, the world’s most prestigious university is being recognized as one of the cruelest to animals. Harvard is home to the New England National Primate Research Center, which houses more than  2,000 nonhuman primates who are used in experiments. In 2004, 600 of these animals were subjected to painful and distressing experiments. Additionally, researcher data suggest that more than 90 percent of the primates kept at Harvard have at least one self-destructive or abnormal behavior and about 20 percent engage in serious self-destructive behaviors. Self-injury occurs as a result of the stress of confinement and experimentation, boredom and loneliness, and neuroses induced by the common practice of separating babies from their mothers. These data confirm that life inside primate research centers such as Harvard’s is truly a nightmare.

Harvard wastes taxpayer money and animals’ lives by conducting twice as many cocaine studies as any other institution in the United States. In fact, Harvard has published more than 75 publications solely about monkeys who have been exposed to cocaine! Harvard currently receives 10 mega-grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study the effects of cocaine and heroin on monkeys in studies such as “Nonhuman Primate Models of Speedball Abuse” and “Nonhuman Primate Model of Cocaine Relapse and Treatment,” conducted by Roger Spealman. In the first study, Spealman makes monkeys addicted to both cocaine and heroin and measures the combined toxicity of these two powerful drugs. In the second study, Spealman makes monkeys addicted to cocaine, withholds the drug to cause withdrawal, and then studies how injecting chemicals and stressing the animals affects the reintroduction of cocaine. In 2005 alone, Spealman received more than $1.25 million in public funding for his cocaine research on monkeys—money that could have gone toward treatment of and clinical research with human drug addicts.

As disturbing and wasteful as it may be to create drug addiction in monkeys, the award for the most useless experiment goes to Harvard’s Alberto Palleroni for his study of fear reactions in monkeys exposed to aerial predators. Palleroni exposes primates to trained raptors and studies their distress calls. It’s the equivalent of locking children in a room with a tiger and watching them scream for their mothers. This twisted experiment is funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. It’s just one more example of how Harvard bilks the public for pointless and cruel animal experiments.

Please write, call, fax, or e-mail the head of the university and politely ask him to stop these atrocities:

Lawrence H. Summers, President
Office of the President
Harvard University
Massachusetts Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-1501
617-495-8550 (fax)
lawrence_summers@harvard.edu