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Animal research practices at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) facility
in Poolesville, Maryland, USA, are being challenged by four members of
Congress, who have asked the NIH director to commission a bioethical review of
experiments being conducted on monkeys at the lab.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
