2009 was the year 24-year-old Annie Marie Thu Le was murdered in a high security Yale animal research facility. Until Raymond John Clark III was charged with a sex-related crime in her death, animal rights activists were suspected and researchers were terrified.
Yesterday, another elite college performing animal experiments was put on red alert: there was an intentional explosion at a Harvard University medical building housing animals destined for research and police are investigating.
Few people know what happens in animal research labs: where "purpose-bred" animal subjects come from and how they are delivered and disposed of, what experiments seek to elucidate, the expensive maze of government/university/pharma/Big Chem funding arrangements (yes, our tax dollars) and it is no coincidence.
Millions are spent to prevent such facts getting out and technicians are sworn to secrecy.
In 2009, the University of Iowa was cleared to construct an $11.2 million, 35,000 square foot subterranean vivarium that will house experimental animals to be used in biomedical research and offer an extra measure of protection from animal rights extremists, reported The Scientist.
Lab animals are the actual currency of government grants to medical centers and universities--academic pork. At a medical center where I worked, researchers felt they had not made it until they were given primates instead of lowly cats or rodents.
Former NIH Director Francis Collins, described himself as a serious Christian and addressed racism and sexism in science but presided over sending billions of primates, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits and of course rodents to their death.
Animal Research at the Highest Government Levels
Thomas R. Insel directed the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University, one of the worlds largest centers for primate research, before becoming director of the NIHs National Institute of Mental Health a position he no longer occupies.
In one Insel experiment, newborn monkeys were removed from their mothers within 48 h of birth, and subjected to stressors without being able to use a social companion to buffer their response to a stressor. What was learned? As expected from previous studies, monkeys removed from their mother shortly after birth and raised in standard nursery conditions develop a syndrome characterized by decreased affiliation, increased aggression, and increased self-directed, repetitive behavior.
In another Insel experiment on voles, an animal was placed in the start box with 2-8 days old pups. Parental behavior was recorded as time spent with pups, either nursing, grooming or crouching during a 5-min period. Females were decapitated the same day.
Similar banal, cruel and taxpayer-funded research has been conducted by Nora Volkow, director of the NIHs National Institute on Drug Abuse who is still, shockingly, in office.
One research paper co-written by Volkow shows a bloody pregnant bonnet macaque in transverse position within HR+ PET scanner . . . positioned so that maternal and fetal organs were within same field of view. The paper concludes that when female primates are dosed with cocaine, fetuses are affected too. Does anyone not know this?
Volkow, in shameless conflicts of interest, partners with Big Pharma and is also clueless about the very charter of her agency! Despite free and drug-free anonymous Twelve Step treatments for addiction (which her agency still calls "abuse"--hello!) she seeks drug treatments. In fact, drug "rehab" has been so monetized by Big Pharma, instead of alcohol or cocaine addictions, patients will now be on Pharma "addiction" drugs for life. Yes, they have changed rooms on the Titanic. Ka-ching.
Defending Dollars Against Public Judgement
There is probably no industry more afraid of transparency than animal research. Ever since Alex Pacheco exposed treatment of the Silver Spring monkeys in 1981, animal researchers have been reduced to uttering its not how it looks or let us explain when unwanted images surface.
The animal research industry has instituted underground vivariums, electronic surveillance, code cards, high tech security and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act to keep us from judging experiments like those of Insel and Volkow that we fund. In addition to enriching Pharma with US tax dollars, animal research also enriches Big Chem, personal care and even cosmetic product producers.
Millions of restrained, conscious animals--usually albino rabbits but sometimes dogs--are subjected to the Draize Test which involves applying test substances to the eye or skin and observing for redness, swelling, discharge, ulceration, hemorrhaging, cloudiness, or blindness in the tested eye. Yet when product liability cases actually come to court, these tests are thrown out because animal results cannot be extrapolated to humans, so the suffering is not even necessary.
Have animal advocates invaded the Ivy walls of Harvard animal research? Many, besides the animals that is, are scared.
addendum This week's escape of monkeys was the second or perhaps THIRD time that animals experimented upon by Tulane have escaped.
(Article changed on Nov 02, 2025 at 3:54 PM EST)
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