Protectionists Can’t Have Research Monkeys
A U.S. appeals court refused Friday to release 15 monkeys used in medical experiments to the custody of animal protectionists on the grounds that such action could impede medical science and make judges supervisors of laboratory research.
“It might open the use of animals in biomedical research to the hazards and vicissitudes of courtroom litigation,” a three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a suit brought by People for Ethical Treatment of Animals Inc.
The group had charged that the monkeys were abused during experiments at the Institute for Behavioral Research, a National Institutes of Health-funded facility in Silver Spring, Md.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson ruled that the group had no standing to sue because it could not show it had been injured or damaged by either the treatment of the monkeys or the decision on custody.
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