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Lab Monkeys, image courtesy of the AP
We may have found the best headline of the week on Monday morning, but KIRO 7's website came through with doubtlessly the most disturbing headline of the week today. It read: "No Federal Violations For Boiled Monkey Death." Just re-typing the headline makes Seattlest shudder.
Turns out if you are working in a lab using monkeys for research and test subjects and you scald one to death, it's no biggie, according to the federal agency in charge of protecting such animals' welfare. The ruling stems from information discovered during a KIRO 7 investigation into animal welfare at an Everett, Wash. pharmaceutical testing facility. While investigating claims of animal abuse at the facility, investigators learned of the scalding death of a healthy female macaque monkey. The monkey had been left inside her cage while the cage was sent into a "180-degree cleaning machine." Despite the monkey's death, the USDA was satisfied with a lab promise to check all cages before washing them rather than pursuing charges or fines.
We imagine that was already a policy at the pharmaceutical facility, but we're not the ones putting billions of dollars into the economy and tens of millions into political pay-offs. This sets a disturbing precedent, even for an industry known for its careless brutality towards its test subjects. Sad to say, but if Planet of the Apes ever came to fruition, we don't believe we would ever read "Monkeys Say: A-OK to Boil Feds."
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This is a tragic accident, but I object to your statement that this industry is known for its careless brutality towards its test subjects. You may find animal testing brutal, but the people doing the research aren't heartless psychopaths. They just feel it is for the greater good and I for one agree.
I for one disagree with KF's comment about animal experiments being "for the greater good."
Hardly. Allow me to quote Dr. Will Tuttle, who sums up my views so well in "The World Peace Diet" when he questions "the underlying assumption of vivisection," -- namely, "that we can become healthier by destroying the health of other living beings. Our welfare," he writes, "is tied to the welfare of all beings; we cannot reap health in ourselves by sowing seeds of disease and death in others. We exhibit not only hubris but remarkable obtuseness in caging, torturing, and infecting animals in the name of improving our health. We can see the outcome of our actions already, as new diseases continue to arise and old ones spread, often becoming impervious to our increasingly devastating drugs."