Primates' namesake defends abuse at Harvard

Harvard is one of the wealthiest universities in the country, and yet apparently unable to follow even the most minimal welfare guidelines for animals, i.e. those provided by the Animal Welfare Act.

"Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN) cited 32 federal violations by Harvard in a nine-month period. The violations included cases in which a “researcher strangled a primate through negligence, monkeys are deprived of water, rabbits and wallaby’s receive improper anesthesia."

A story in the Harvard student paper, The Crimson, carried the story about SAEN's announcement. A university representative was contacted for response. You will NOT believe the fellow's name: Gibbons. Gibbons? You are kidding me. That's like someone who runs a dry cleaning business being named Bob Grungy, or a dentist named Susie Snagglepuss. He seems convinced that things like pain management or a failing to observe an animal to ensure his safety are unproblematic.

A Harvard Medical School spokesman, Don L. Gibbons, contested the validity of the report, claiming that all but one of the violations were reported because of clerical errors, and did not actually involve animal abuse.

The one exception was the incident of the asphyxiated primate, which Gibbons called “an unfortunate accident.”

A death that could have been prevented if someone would have been paying attention is unfortunate?

In the experiment, a monkey was drinking grape juice through a hose and “loved the grape juice so much, it stuffed the tube down its throat,” Gibbons said.

The researcher could only see the back of the monkey’s head and didn’t realize the monkey was suffocating until it was too late, according to Gibbons.

Parched with thirst, desperate for anything to drink...that's no accident, pal.