No Cures In 45 Years

SHUT DOWN THE OREGON PRIMATE CENTER

Response to Willamette Week March 31, 2010 cover article “This Monkey Died for You” OHSU animal researchers fire back at their critics

First it is important to note that one of the interviewees, Jim Newman, is from OHSU’s “Office of Strategic Communication”. He is paid to spin animal research for the sake of protecting OHSU’s income. Newman states that animals “are an important part in the research process.” He states “If we didn’t have primate centers or the ability to study animals as a whole, a lot of things would just come to a halt.” His claims are strategic, incomplete, and misleading. If the primate centers didn't exist, what would "come to a halt" would be the waste of thousands of lives and billions of dollars of public money.

What Newman fails to acknowledge is that biomedical research has gained great insight using non-animal models, which more accurately predict human response. He does admit however, that there have been no cures as a result of the experiments conducted at OHSU’s primate center. He specifically references CAAT’s “No Cures in 40 Years” slogan. He attempts to color this confession by stating that their research led to “a drug.” What is interesting is that he does not offer the name of the drug or say if it was ultimately helpful to humans. Or perhaps he is not referring to a specific drug, just speaking generally about the way things work in drug development and expects us to take his word for it that their monkey data somehow contributes. In the now more than 45 years that the primate center has been around, is that really good enough?

Newman does what proponents of animal experimentation always do. They spin things so the public confuses casual versus causal relationships. Yes there has been a lot of animal experimentation and yes our life spans have gotten longer. That does not mean one is responsible for the other. A while back the Southwest Foundation For Biomedical Research made the claim ”During the 20th century, virtually every major advance in medical knowledge and treatment involved research using animal models”. Rick Bogle of the Primate Freedom Project replied “Indeed ‘virtually every major advance in medical knowledge and treatment” involved researchers drinking coffee or tea as well. It is as misleading to claim that the coffee and tea were where needed for medical progress as it is to imply that animal models were needed and that no other method could have been successful.” Yes there are many great medications. Yes most of them have been tested on animals. This does not mean that they were discovered in animal models just that after discovery, they were subject to animal trials. These tests are done but they don’t predict how a drug will work in humans. If these tests are keeping us safe, why are 100,000 people a year dying from using prescription drugs as prescribed?

OHSU brags about their monkey-based vaccine research but a “breakthrough” in the animal lab doesn’t mean a breakthrough for people. Dozens of AIDS vaccines have been developed in monkeys. None of them work in people.

Newman said “People don’t understand how science works”. There is some truth to that. A lot of people don’t understand that science is about predictability. Dr.s Ray and Jean Greek, who do understand science, explain: “Science...relies on axiomatic-deductive reasoning. Scientists set forth principles or axioms that are true and self-evident and derive from them more ‘truths’. Testing on animals or studying diseases in animals can be done in a scientific manner. However, when the axiom is “animals and humans have so much in common that we can extrapolate the results from animals to humans” then the results are going to be disastrous, not because the scientific method was not followed but rather because the axiom is incorrect. This is why animal-model research is specious science; the axiom is incorrect”. More simply stated, an understanding of science, and its basis in predictability, leads one to understand that using non-human animals to model humans doesn’t work. Those who would like to understand better “how science works” should read FAQs on the Use of Animals in Science: A handbook for the scientifically perplexed by Dr. Ray Greek and Niall Shanks

In this interview, the OHSU representatives used another pr classic; they sensationalize the opponents of animal research to avoid the real question of whether animal research is working. They focus on Jerry Vlasick, an anti-vivisection activist who says sensational things, thus diverting us from the fact that thousands of doctors and scientists oppose animal experimentation because it isn’t effective. OHSU cannot come up with a substantive, evidence-based argument so they have to play victim. It is not a
“rare” scientific opinion that animal experimentation doesn’t make sense with 21st century knowledge and technology. (Of course the idea that doctors should wash their hands used to be a fringe opinion).

Ilhem Messaoudi stated: We’ve made some amazing breakthroughs in vaccine development, and vaccine development requires animal models. You cannot begin to build a vaccine if you do not understand the virus. You cannot understand the virus outside of its normal life cycle, which is inside a host—be it an animal or a human”. Yes you cannot understand the virus outside of its normal life cycle, and the normal life cycle of a virus infecting a human is the life cycle of a virus infecting a human specifically. Doctors used to think that the polio virus infected people through their nasal passages because that is how it works in monkeys. Only after spraying chemicals in kids’ noses, causing some to lose there sense of smell, did they go back to the information that had been obtained from studying human cadavers, that polio infects humans through the digestive system. According to Dr. Mark Feinberg, leading AIDS researcher; "What good does it do you to test something in a monkey? You find five or six years from now that it works in the monkey, and then you test it in humans and you realize that humans behave totally differently from monkeys, so you've wasted five years."

When questioned about Vioxx, Jim Newman stated:

“...animal studies cannot be blamed for Vioxx and there are facts to prove this. Vioxx was tested in both humans AND animals before it was approved for public use by the FDA and USDA. Neither the human or animal testing revealed the problems. The issues with Vioxx were only discovered once the drug was approved and taken by hundreds of thousands of patients. The problems were rare enough that they were only discovered when a very large number of people took the drug.”

That’s not what happened. Human clinical trials DID show cardiovascular damage from Vioxx. Apparently, animal trials did not show these problems but later when clinical trials started to indicate that Vioxx caused heart problems to humans, the pharmaceutical companies pointed to the animal trials to make the claim that the drug was safe.

Once again, animal tests did not keep people safe but they did provide an alibi for the pharmaceutical companies. Vioxx has killed tens of thousands of people.

This tragedy illustrates the failure of the current FDA and USDA systems, which require animal testing before a drug is released on the market. An overhaul is necessary not only in the requirements of the FDA, but in the enforcement of their regulations on the research being conducted. The article points out that OHSU received their first warning letter in 2008 from the USDA. Though three citations were given: a surgical sponge left in a monkey, surgery done on the wrong monkey at one point, and one monkey unnecessarily dying because she was having a difficult labor that was not attended by any of the technicians or scientists present. However, OHSU was not fined until People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called for the USDA to take action on behalf of the animals, who suffered due to the negligence of the researchers. Why it is the responsibility of an animal welfare group to hold the USDA responsible for enforcing the USDA's own regulations. On that same note, the article states: “OHSU does not track the number of monkeys that have died in its experiments.” However, in the comments following the article on Willamette Week’s website, Dr. Sharon Methvin points out:

“Any facility using federal funds is required by law to track the outcome and final disposal for any animal used for experiments, so either they are in violation when stating they do not know how many have died, or they lied to WW.” Which is it? Newman, who was active in the comments section, conveniently fails to address this comment.

Messaoudi stated that they try to do things “in a very responsible and ethical manner before we jump into an animal model”. If they use non-animal models whenever possible, how do they explain the work of Judy Cameron? She does ridiculous behavioral studies at OHSU, reproducing things we have already learned from observing people. In just one of her many studies that defy common sense, she has investigated whether orphaned babies do better with a surrogate parent than monkeys who are left orphaned. Do they really believe that this information had to come from a monkey maternal deprivation study in the 21st century? Here is a quote from one of her grant abstracts: “Behavioral studies are being used to determine if infants who receive greater social support have a decreased probability of developing anxious and depressive behaviors, compared to infants who receive less social support”. She was featured on Good Morning America’s “You Paid for It” about bogus projects we are paying for. Are they “animal rights extremists”? She has used monkeys to study whether exercise is good for the brain (We already knew exercise is good for the brain). She forced some of these monkeys to stay sedentary in their cages, put the other monkeys on treadmills, and then put them through cognitive tests developed from studies of children.

In regards to their absurd claim that their goal is to reduce the amount of animal experimentation, why has the number of animal used at OHSU steadily grown and why are they asking for even more public money to expand the primate center?

Meanwhile, Messaoudi's excuse that the animals being experimented on are “purpose-bred” is a poor attempt to separate animals born under different circumstances, showing preference for those who are lucky enough to be born to specific parents over those unlucky enough to be born in a breeding facility. It is as if those who are “purpose-bred” will some how be more willing to have multiple brain surgeries in a week, be more okay with living in a metal box in isolation, and willingly offer their unborn babies to be cut from them and dissected at various stages of development. If “purpose-bred” is a justification, then we should assume Messaoudi endorses dog fighting among other things that the general public finds abhorrent.

Matt Rossell, who is mentioned in the article, responded with the following:

After working for two years in this lab, and exposing the horrible stark and inhumane treatment of these socially complex monkeys, where more than a thousand of them are reduced to a stark life alone in a tiny stainless steel cage, I am offended that Newman is allowed to equate humane animal care to the presence or lack of post surgical analgesics. This conveniently leaves out the looming fact that life for a social primate living along in a tiny cage is by itself, torture, with or without experiments or pain medication. My work in the Psychological Well Being Department (which was a lame attempt to meet a hollow provision of the Animal Welfare Act) was to try to treat all the bizarre behaviors, hair pulling, infant abuse, feces smearing and eating, self mutilation and depression. Conditions which are not normal in wild populations (certainly not in the acute manifestations in the lab) and are a direct result of taking babies monkeys away to early from their mothers and putting them in isolation for experiments. Our program didn't work, staff saw it as a joke because the tools I was given, toys and treats, will never fix problems caused by this inhumane husbandry that is standard practice in research labs.

To say the vast majority of these monkeys are socially housed is to ignore that 1000 live alone, in this facility alone; entire lives, in a tiny cage, and they are suffering. And even the social warehousing of monkeys at this lab has more to do with assembly-line style breeding to crank out more babies for research than anything that resembles humane concern. This is a monkey farm.

And it was never mentioned that OHSU's monkey census has shockingly gone up by 68% in the past decade when OHSU was allowed to rave about the “golden Rs” of reducing the number of animals used in experiments.

Messaoudi claims that animal researchers would never just create an experiment around an animal population that they have convenient access to in the lab. This is not accurate. I witnessed this exact practice play out with an aged population of monkeys who were being kept alive with little thought other than to see how long a rhesus can live in a cage and then researchers looked at this "resource" and developed experiments to make use of them. Another similar example is Judy Cameron's chronically catheterized male rhesus group (trained to tolerate wearing a tight nylon jacket with a metal tube attaching them from their back to the top of the cage.) where she has sought different experiments to exploit this group and make money. Cameron is one of the most prolific grant writers at the Oregon Primate Center and has among the most ridiculous behavioral experiments which will never benefit people.

And the more you look at the basic research that is being conducted, the more you would recognize the waste of animal lives and money. Often, experiments on monkeys and other animals attempt to study diseases and conditions that don't even occur naturally in those species, and much of these animal studies are following, not preceding human clinical studies and observations. If it has already been proven in humans, why then try to replicate it in an obviously inferior animal model?

And before you read Newman's likely attempt to discredit me, please know that my observations at the lab were backed up by Dr. Jane Goodall, the former USDA inspection Dr. Isis Johnson Brown who quit in frustration after her supervisors didn't support her efforts to enforce the law, and a group of independent primate technicians who just reviewed the video that I took and made comments about the similarities to what they had experienced in other labs across the country.

I spent two years with the monkeys at OHSU; Newman spends all of his time trying to discredit people like me.