ONPRC: Torturing Monkeys or Conducting Science? Here Are the Facts

Judy Cameron': Maternal Deprivation and Psychological Development
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 these animals makes this research both scientifically and ethically unjustifiable considering the human data that have been acquired on this topic.

Judy Cameron, an experimenter at the ONPRC, separates infants from their mothers at different ages and under slightly different circumstances to see how it affects their development, their behavior, and their mental health later in life. As with the first 50 years of maternal deprivation studies, made infamous 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.

Kathy Grant: Maternal Nicotine Consumption and Fetal Lung Development
ONPRC vivisector 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, she is merely replicating what is already known about the effects of alcohol on humans.

Elliot Spindel's Work: Maternal Nicotine Consumption and Fetal Lung Development
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 alleviate the problem effectively.

ONPRC's Eliot Spindel has consumed 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 being delivered, the newborns are immediately taken away from their mothers, have their lung functioning measured, and are killed and mutilated to remove their lungs—all before their 26th hour of life. Spindel excuses his grisly experiments on animals by stating that since there are still women who smoke while pregnant, he is hoping to discover how nicotine affects the fetal lung and how to block its effects.⁶

Kevin Grove: Maternal Obesity and Childhood Body Weight
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 vivisector Kevin Grove recently began work on an NIH-funded project that 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-term and short-term body weight of their offspring. This project began in July 2007 and is scheduled to run through 2011. Grove received $750,000 from the NIH last year.⁷

Michael Axthelm and Scott Wong: AIDS/HIV
Twenty-five years of failed animal testing have shown that nonhuman primates are not a good model for AIDS. In fact, according to the National Institutes of Health, all of the more than 80 vaccines for HIV/AIDS developed using animals and brought to human trials have been complete failures. Concerns about the flaws of animal testing and the virtues of human-based medicine are nothing new. 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

Experimenters Michael K. Axthelm and Scott Wong continue to perform AIDS experiments on rhesus monkeys. As a result of their inducing these animals with AIDS-like diseases, the animals suffer from acute weight loss, major organ failure, breathing problems, diarrhea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and neurological disorders.

¹Fuchs E, Flïugge G. 2006. Experimental animal models for the simulation of depression and anxiety. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 8(3):323-33.
²Grant KA. Scientific discovery. Oregon National Primate Research Center [Internet]. [Cited 2008 Jan 18]. Available from: http://onprc.ohsu.edu/discovery/dspScientistsItem.cfm?doc_id=237.
³Ivester PL and others. 2007. Ethanol self-administration and alterations in the livers of the cynomolgus monkey, Macaca fascicularis. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 31(1):144-55.
⁴Maritz GS, Morley CJ, Harding R. 2005. Early developmental origins of impaired lung structure and function. Early Hum Dev. 81(9):763-71.
⁵Maritz GS, Morley CJ, Harding R.
⁶Spindel ER. Scientific discovery. Oregon National Primate Research Center [Internet]. [Cited 2007 Nov 1]. Accessed from: http://onprc.ohsu.edu/discovery/dspScientistsItem.cfm?doc_id=150.
⁷National Instititues of Health, Office of Extramural Research. 2007 state-by-state funding, Oregon [Internet]. 2007 [cited
⁸2007 Nov 1]. Available from: http://silk.nih.gov/public/cbz2zoz.@www.fy2007.oregon.csv.
Associated Press. US said to back AIDS vaccine test on humans. The New York Times 1987 Aug 18.

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