Next week, Harvard Law School is hosting a timely panel titled, “Non-Human Primates in Research: Legal and Ethical Considerations.”
I hope plenty of animal experimenters turn out because they need to hear—in addition to how it’s morally indefensible to imprison and torment primates—that people in Massachusetts laboratories who subject monkeys and other animals to painful and deadly procedures or neglect the animals are subject to state cruelty-to-animals laws just like everyone else.
This spring, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed two complaints with law enforcement calling for charges to be filed against Harvard University and Northeastern University faculty and staff for apparent violations of Massachusetts state laws related to animal neglect and animal fighting.
In the first case, we’re urging the Worcester County district attorney to file cruelty-to-animals charges against the faculty and staff responsible for the deaths of at least 12 monkeys at Harvard Medical School’s now-defunct New England Primate Research Center. This action was prompted by an April 2015 Boston Globe exposé revealing that the extremely dehydrated squirrel monkeys were found dead in their cages or were euthanized because of poor health at the facility.
As PETA noted in its complaint, Massachusetts law prohibits “unnecessarily fail[ing] to provide [an animal] with proper food [or] drink.” One monkey didn’t even have a water spout in her cage, another’s water line was malfunctioning, three had a history of “water deprivation” and another was unable to drink because her tooth was caught in experimental equipment she was forced to wear.
In July, Harvard faculty essentially admitted these failures when they retracted a published journal article on the grounds that monkeys they first reported to have developed dehydration-related brain damage due to experiments actually “may have had inadequate access to water.”
These disturbing revelations followed ongoing reports of monkeys’ negligence-related injuries and deaths at Harvard’s primate center, which played an undeniably major role in prompting its closure. These included another dehydration-related death, a primate sustaining two broken bones when his leg was smashed in a heavy cage door, a primate who died after escaping from a cage and a subsequent imaging procedure and a primate who was found dead in a cage after it was run through a scalding-hot mechanical cage washer. The facility accumulated more than 20 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act just between 2010 and 2012, and it was levied a federal fine of $24,000 in 2013 for some of these.
Harvard may have finally closed its primate prison, but the personnel who staffed it should still be held accountable for these monkeys’ slow, agonizing deaths by dehydration that apparently violated state law.
In response to another PETA complaint, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office is reviewing evidence that faculty in the psychology department at nearby Northeastern University are conducting “roid rage” experiments that involve forcing hamsters to engage in fights. This appears to violate Massachusetts law that calls for the fining and/or imprisonment of anyone who “owns, possesses, keeps or trains any bird, dog or other animal, with the intent that it shall be engaged in an exhibition of fighting” and “establishes or promotes an exhibition of the fighting of any birds, dogs or other animals.”
According to published papers, Northeastern experimenters injected anabolic steroids and substances such as cocaine into hamsters and then pitted these hyper-aggressive hamsters against other hamsters who hadn’t been drugged in staged fights that were observed, videotaped, and “scored.” Since 1996, hundreds of animals have been used and killed in the experiments, which have received more than $3 million in taxpayer money—including $306,000 just in 2015.
The choice of hamsters was especially fiendish because they are solitary, territorial animals who become terrified and aggressive when others invade their space.
During the filmed fights—much like during dog fights—hamsters were scored based on how many times they lunged at, trapped, bit, or attacked the front, rump, or belly of their opponent. After some fights, the experimenters declared one animal the “winner” and the other the “loser.” Some “successful” animals were forced into multiple fights against different hamsters in a tournament-style bracket system, while others were killed and had their brains dissected.
Massachusetts animal-neglect and animal-fighting statutes do not exempt experimenters. Forcing animals to engage in violent fights and neglecting to provide them with water to the point of death are acts of cruelty that should be punished whether they involve dogs or hamsters or monkeys and whether they occur in a dingy garage or—as in these cases—tax-funded laboratories.
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Justin Goodman is PETA’s director of Laboratory Investigations and an adjunct professor of sociology at Marymount University.