Well, well, well. Another day, another government-funded sh!tshow.
A study published in the Veterinary Pathology journal has been retracted, after the authors “chose to retract it” because new information suggests that the monkeys in the study died from dehydration at the Harvard Medical School facility. The animals did not have water.
The retraction follows comments by the journal’s publishers in April saying they were scrutinizing the paper after the Globe raised questions about its findings and the center’s former director questioned the article’s integrity, saying he believes that many of the monkeys included in the research had been treated in an inhumane way.
The research center closed in May, following a “litany” of problems.
Department of Agriculture inspectors found numerous violations of animal welfare rules after the deaths, an embarrassment that caused consternation across the university. It paid a $24,000 fine to the Department of Agriculture for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
The university denied there were any “animal-care problems” at the facility and said it was a financial issue. Speaking of financial issues, this animal murder mill got some $25 million in government (that would be you) funding.
Miller said in an e-mail that his team chose to retract the paper because they learned that four of the 13 monkeys they studied lacked water for an unknown period of time. They therefore could no longer attribute the monkeys’ condition to illness, he added.
Miller also said “every staff member, regardless of their role, worked tirelessly to ensure the health and safety of the animals housed at that facility.”
Obviously.
Wang, who ran the center from September 2011 to February 2012, furnished a spreadsheet that showed a dozen squirrel monkeys were found dehydrated and dead in their cages or euthanized between 1999 and 2011, suggesting there were far more suspicious deaths at the center than originally believed.
The dead monkeys included a 10-year-old female whose water line was malfunctioning, a 4-year-old female that had no water spout in her cage, and a 3-year-old female unable to drink because her tooth was caught in a jacket.
This is just one of many taxpayer-funded rackets involving inhumane treatment of animals. It’s time to cut off the government funds for this stuff and let the private sector pick up the tab if it’s so lucrative. Newt Gingrich is a big proponent of growing the NIH budget for animal testing. As I wrote back in April:
The example Gingrich gives is AIDS research. “The N.I.H. recently discovered a vaccine that appears to cure an AIDS-like virus in monkeys,” he writes.
Appears? Aids-Like?
Here’s how many times the NIH has said it is approaching some kind of breakthrough on AIDS (2013, 2000, 1999, 1994) — and that’s just a cursory search. We’ve been experimenting on animals while doing AIDS research since the ‘80s. Where is our AIDS vaccine? All we have is a lot of dead monkeys.
AIDS research like the “research” that was done at this now shuttered lab.
This story at Harvard is just ONE that we know about. These labs have no external oversight at all — oversight to protect the animals and the taxpayers. The opposition will say that they have the “Animal Welfare Act” — but as you can see, the “Animal Welfare Act” isn’t working.
Learn more about government’s waste of taxpayer dollars at White Coat Waste.
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