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Harvard To Close New England Primate Research Center
sciencehabit writes "Citing an increasingly bleak outlook for federal research funding, Harvard Medical School is shutting down its major primate center, which has recently experienced the departure of several key scientists and an investigation into its handling of animals. In the announcement, which surprised many primate researchers, the school said it will not seek to renew the New England Primate Research Center's (NEPRC's) 5-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will 'wind down operations' at the center in Southborough, Massachusetts, over the next 2 years. The center, which has a nearly 50-year history, had done groundbreaking work on an AIDS vaccine and developed animal models for diseases such as Parkinson's, among other accomplishments."
This comment has not been tested on animals. However, we cannot guarantee that it is not cruelty-free.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
they just got fired, who is going to feed and care for them now?
Federal funding has all but dried up for Primate research. Researchers have found that Chimps are indeed very similar to humans, and testing on them is inhumane. Animal/primates rights activists have won, and the few chimps in federal care are the only ones left, they won't be replaced. There's quite a backstory here that isn't being told.
As great of research Harvard provided, they had effectively built a Guantanamo for apes.
moox. for a new generation.
When they tried to shut one plant down the apes took over SanFrancisco.
from what i hear, the monkeys were treated better than at gitmo
I don't think he meant it literally. Don't be obtuse.
Really? Where do you source your information you right-wing hippie? The primates are and some have already been shipped to other primate labs. Acquiring and taking care of primates (or any animal) in a public institution is under a very strict oversight from several government agencies as well as institutional committee's. These animals have care and space very similar to a regular zoo. If any of the government agencies would have as strict oversight as these do, we wouldn't have disasters like the Keystone pipeline leaks, BP's oil rig or Exxon-Valdez.
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That's right, the primates had a chance of leaving before they died.
Have gnu, will travel.
And volunteer to be tested on instead of animals. Someone has to cure AIDS and Cancer and its not going to happen through computer simulations and best wishes.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
It is hard to experiment on the apes if you don't keep them caged. No it is not humane, it is research. Research is where they do bad things to animals (and sometimes people although usually the people volunteer) in order to promote the greater good. You may not agree with it, as is your right, but without it scientific progress slows down. If you've ever been in any slaughter house you'll see there is little humane about our treatment of animals. Most people don't care because they are just animals and have little in the way of rights. We just want our damn cheeseburger.
Used to live right around the corner from this place.
I live right around the corner from a lot of places, and I have no idea what's going on in any of them.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This isn't spraying some perfume into rabbits eyes to make sure it doesn't give people a rash, this is doing research to treat and prevent diseases that are killing and disabling an astounding number of people.
I think most people that have come to the ethical conclusion that the thousands of animals that they tested HIV and AIDS treatments on at this facility, are more important than the tens or hundreds of thousands of people that are not dead, and living their lives relatively normally because of that research, probably don't know anyone that was pushed down the terrifying, grueling, tortuous path of a slow AIDS related death.
So a couple businesses went out of business in the area and long story short, I have some really nice tablets and chairs and computer monitors now. So the question is, are they going to auction off all the monkeys? Because that would be freakin awesome!
Its students are cheating. Its professors are either too dumb to use the spreadsheet correctly or so corrupt they cook up data to be shills for austerity mongers. And they cut real research centers to save money. They buy real estate in around Boston from companies going bankrupt and take off the tax rolls of local municipalities (look up the Aresenal area). I think Harvard's mission has become growing the endowments as much as possible while coasting on the goodwill created by earlier decades of solid academic work.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My friends and I used to sit for hours and watch those flying monkeys on leashes go round and round.
Actually in most cases their quality of life is improved. Mostly research primates have better healthcare and food availability than out in the wild. Their average life-spans are much shorter in the wild. Often they fight, bite or scratch each other, get infected and die. They get eaten, they go hungry etc. The being stuck in a cage part is a negative, sure, but most of the stuff they do to them in research is not really all that bad. See, the thing is, animals don't have the option to join civilization as regular citizens. Once people understand that, it's easy to see that most research primates live fairly good lives. If my only alternatives were to fend for myself in the wild with an average lifespan of 15 years, vs. to have food, housing, and healthcare provided free for me in exchange for staying home all day and doing some research task for a few hours a day in a situation with an average lifespan of 80 years, I might consider the latter an improvement on the former. Not much different from what I do now anyway, except that I get a few hours a week for recreation. Yes, there are labs that study things like pain (that's mostly rats though) or other things that may make research primates' lives relatively worse, but in most labs that's not the case. What we do to them is only worse by civilized human life standards, which will never be available to them.
Also, I think animal rights people are highly hypocritical. If we made a list of all animal rights activists and banned them from medical advances that were based on animal research (or delayed them from being able to use medical advances until such a time that 'simulations' were able to catch up to animal research), you'd quickly see these animal rights organizations' membership numbers drop significantly.
Humans make the results more accurate.
Consider the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, Manson, the guy known as BTK (for "bind, torture, kill"), the Fort Hood shooter, and those guys that raped girls in Connecticut and then burned down the house with them inside. There are enough awful people that we have no shortage of humans for medical experiments.
I would have no qualms about performing the experiments. We can implant wires into their brains, give them harmful drugs, whatever... Except for the Fort Hood shooter, we can use these prisoners to test for methods to treat spinal injury. (we break their neck, wait the average amount of time it takes to reach a hospital, then try the experimental treatment) We can use them to test saving people who fall through ice. (dump them in, wait, attempt treatment) We can use them to test treatments for severe burns. (burn them, wait, attempt treatment)
Want to test something less serious, like household products? Sure, we can do that too. Strap them down, pin back their eyelids, and spray away. Whatever you like: perfume, ant spray, truck bed paint, engine degreaser, dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, oven cleaner, drain unclogger, etc.
I wonder how many anti-animal-rights people would be willing to forgo medical advances that were the result of human experimentation yet still be against the idea of it making a comeback.
The line between hypocrite and pragmatist pretty much comes down to if you are talking about 'us' or 'them'.
Your right. It's been around longer then 50 years
Researchers estimate that sometime in the 1930s a form of simian immunodeficiency virus, SIV, jumped to humans in central Africa. The mutated virus became the first human immunodeficiency virus, HIV-1.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Many people build their lifestyle and identity around the idea that animals and humans are fundamentally different, and threatening that really upsets them.
Hypocrisy doesn't necessarily enter into this; you don't have to agree with the method used to obtain some information in order to use it ethically.
I found this comment on the RTFA to be of particular interest. It offers a lot more insight into what may have driven Harvard to shut down the center.
I wonder how many anti-animal-rights people would be willing to forgo medical advances that were the result of human experimentation yet still be against the idea of it making a comeback.
Some medical advances, including methods currently used to revive drowning victims, were developed by the Nazis in experiments conducted on concentration camp inmates. Do you think that we should forgo using these treatments on anyone that thinks these experiments were immoral?
Or perhaps you could do the prudent thing and blame it on poor budgeting decisions.
I think that, for example, this is better than sending money to the national endowment of the arts, or even cut it into defense spending by stopping the manufacture of Abrams tanks that the Army generals have already asked that they stop doing.
I don't see how anybody anywhere could argue that this is a reason to increase spending. Even if you raised the shit out of the top income rate, you still haven't solved the budget deficit. The spending HAS to decrease as what we're currently doing is absolutely not sustainable.
Cutting more important spending projects just so that they could say "See?! We must spend more!" is a really asshole thing to do, and people like you foolishly buy into it.
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I didn't know Bieber was a medical researcher?
No, but I also not claiming that animal right's people should abstain from modern medicine because they have ethical issues with animal experimentation.
I fully support your right to be a dickhead. This rant places you firmly in the camp with all the people you claim to denounce.
If you've ever been in any slaughter house you'll see there is little humane about our treatment of animals. Most people don't care because they are just animals and have little in the way of rights.
I'm willing to bet most people do care, which is why they'd rather not be confronted with it. They'd prefer to keep believing that the animals are humanely raised and slaughtered. Personally, I've seen enough and found it disturbing... but I still like eating meat too much, and when it gets on my plate it's yummy food, not factory farmed, slaughtered animals.
When I was young I lived on a farm. I was involved in the slaughter and preparation of the food we ate. Life is ruthless and most people like to be insulated from that real world.
I'm not doing that job for many reasons, but animal rights is not among them. I'd bite right into the side of a living animal if it were safe to do so. (it isn't: unsanitary, legal trouble, and maybe getting pecked or kicked)
As an end-user, my only complaints about slaughter houses are the bad sanitation and the sleazy attempts to add cheap filler into the meat. As a worker I'd take issue with the pay, the boredom, the legal risk if you fail to follow the crazy laws, the stench, the disease risk, the risk of getting cut or burned or crushed... it's not exactly a cushy office job. I guess it beats being a coal miner or road worker.
If you've ever been in any slaughter house you'll see there is little humane about our treatment of animals.
Well of course. Humane is for humans.
I don't expect a hippo to be nice to me. To a hippo, I'm just a random animal. If I get annoying, the hippo will slaughter me without the slightest bit of compassion.