Chimps and monkeys in Louisiana research lab: Tonight on ABC’s Nightline
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TiVo alert: tonight’s episode of Nightline may be one animal lovers won’t want to miss. The program documents a nine-month undercover study conducted by the Humane Society of the United States in the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana, which conducts tests for pharmaceutical companies and hepatitis studies on monkeys. ABCNews.com has the details of what HSUS investigators found there:
The Humane Society investigator who gained access as an employee shot video of a lab worker striking a restrained monkey’s teeth three times with a pipe. The investigator says the employee wanted the monkey to open its mouth. ‘The man is sort of threatening him [the monkey] with this pole and smacking his teeth at the same time,’ the investigator said, describing the video. Another piece of video shows a lab employee hitting an infant monkey in the head and swearing when the monkey bites at her finger.
Also interviewed for the program was Narriman Fakier, who coordinated research on 100 chimpanzees during her employment at the lab from fall 2002 until spring 2004, when she says she was told to quit or be fired following her repeated complaints about the animals’ treatment. Fakier has since filed a lawsuit against New Iberia; the lab says that she chose to quit and her suit was filed for ‘monetary gain.’
From ABCNews.com:
The National Institutes of Health gave the New Iberia Research Center nearly $18 million in federal funds for chimpanzee research between 2000 and 2009. It also declined ‘Nightline’s’ repeated requests for an on-camera interview in favor of a statement that, in part, said, ‘Thanks to research involving primates, countless lives have been saved. For example, primates were critical to the development of vaccines for hepatitis A and B, now common pediatric immunizations. In addition, the chimpanzee is integral to current efforts to develop vaccines for hepatitis C, which globally affects more than 170 million people.’
The HSUS says its investigation at New Iberia has resulted in the filing of a 108-page complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The group says New Iberia houses about 6,000 monkeys and more than 300 chimpanzees.
‘These experiments come at an enormous short-term and long-term expense to taxpayers, and an even greater expense in suffering and anguish to chimpanzees and other primates forced to live in this pitiful laboratory,’ said HSUS president and CEO Wayne Pacelle.
Primatologist Jane Goodall echoed Pacelle’s sentiments, saying, ‘In no lab I have visited have I seen so many chimpanzees exhibit such intense fear. The screaming I heard when chimpanzees were being forced to move toward the dreaded needle in their squeeze cages was, for me, absolutely horrifying.’
Nightline airs at 11:35 p.m. tonight on ABC.
--Lindsay Barnett