In the letter, “Column missed importance of lab animal research,” (Gazette Oct. 25) a UMass official fails to mention that UMass can’t even abide by the Animal Welfare Act, and has been cited for numerous violations following its carelessness and negligence. He fails to mention the marmoset monkey in a researcher’s “care” who suffered severe burns, leading to his death, when experimenters used hand warmers on his body as he was recovering from surgery. Or the one who was carelessly allowed to escape and suffered a tail injury upon recapture. Or the one who was observed to be shaky and lethargic, but wasn’t given veterinary attention.
In other UMass laboratories, in violation of federal guidelines, mice have drowned, birds have starved to death, and zebrafish have died from overheating. In another incident, experimenters failed to give several hundred mice who had just undergone surgery necessary pain relief.
At UMass, tiny monkeys are tormented, and these experiments haven’t yielded results that benefit human health in any way. While marmosets exhibit some evidence of cognitive decline with age, they do not develop human-like Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is a condition unique to humans that has never been successfully “modeled” in a non-human animal.
New drugs developed using animals for Alzheimer’s disease has a failure rate of 99.6% in humans. Human-relevant research methods, such as epidemiological studies, organs-on-chips, sophisticated uses of human stem cells, genomics and proteomics, imaging, and computer modeling, can replace these invasive UMass experiments on monkeys.
UMass must not let its own special interest — so far, more than $4 million taxpayer dollars — stop it from ending these cruel experiments and modernizing their archaic research program. https://headlines.peta.org/marmosets-die-at-umass/
Dr. Katherine Roe
PETA Science Advancement and Outreach Chief, Washington, D.C.