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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: January/February 2007

IDA wins copies of primate records

 

PORTLAND, Ore.--Matt Rossell, Portland representative for In Defense of Animals, on December 21, 2006 confirmed that he had at last received 113,000 pages of Oregon National Primate Research Center monkey care records, eight years after he first applied to obtain them in 1998, during a two-year stint as a center employee.

The center is operated by Oregon Health & Science University. After the university refused to provide the records, Rossell and IDA sued to get them in 2001. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in April 2005 that Rossell and IDA had a right to obtain copies, and that a copying charge of more than $150,000 proposed by the university was excessive. However, the court allowed the university to black out the names of individual researchers and animal caretakers.

"OHSU chose paper over plastic-dozens of boxes of documents instead of a small pile of CD disks-at a much greater cost to taxpayers and OHSU's donors," said an In Defense of Animals prepared statement. "According to estimates from OHSU's own computer applications manager during depositions, it would have only cost OHSU around $2,000 to produce the documents in an electronic format. This is a fraction of the amount OHSU estimated for producing the paper copies-approximately $22,500-which means more than $20,000 in extra costs were incurred by OHSU supporters and taxpayers.

"We just purchased a high quality scanner and need volunteers to help transfer these documents into electronic files that will be much easier to review," In Defense of Animals said.

Independent reviews of laboratory records have in recent years repeatedly resulted in penalties against research institutions and agreements to improve procedures. The University of California at San Francisco, for instance, in September 2005 agreed to pay a civil penalty of $92,500 to the USDA in settlement of 61 alleged Animal Welfare Act violations, allegedly committed in 2001-2003.

"We did not want them to settle because [in a settlement] they don't have to admit guilt," said In Defense of Animals founder Elliot Katz, asserting that "UCSF feared a public airing of the evidence."

In November 2005, then-University of Connecticut Animal Rights Collective president Justin Goodman, a graduate student, discovered and reported to the USDA numerous alleged Animal Welfare Act violations by faculty neuroscientist David Waitzman. Funded by the National Institute of Health, the Waitzman studies involve "drilling holes into the heads of otherwise healthy monkeys, implanting steel springs in their eyes, intentionally inflicting brain damage, and measuring the effects on eye movements. The monkeys are killed at the end of the study," according to a UCARC media release.

In July 2006, the release stated, "documents released by the USDA through the Freedom of Information Act" showed that a March 2006 inspection "resulted in five citations for non-compliance that contributed to the tragic death of a rhesus monkey."