NATION IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : Fatal Experiment on Monkeys Cleared

A federal appeals court cleared the way for the National Institutes of Health to perform fatal brain experiments on three monkeys that have been at the center of an animal rights controversy for nearly a decade. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court’s refusal to grant an injunction that would have barred the NIH from conducting experiments on the three so-called “Silver Spring Monkeys.” They were among 17 monkeys seized in 1981 in a police raid of a Silver Spring, Md., laboratory that was funded by NIH. The lab was later cited for alleged animal abuse and shut down. The monkeys were returned to NIH.