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U. of Wis. Records Show High Monkey Deaths

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. - A study at the University of Wisconsin led to an
unusual number of deaths and illnesses of rhesus monkeys in 2001 and
2002, internal school records show.

The UW memos were released Monday by the Primate Freedom Project, a
group critical of animal research, which obtained them through an open
records request.

The records show one monkey died while an attendant went to lunch
during an experiment, and others were given drugs that had not been
approved by a review committee at UW-Madison's National Primate
Research Center.

University officials said the school took action against Ei Terasawa,
a professor of pediatrics, after problems with her research surfaced.
She was suspended from work on animals for two years, and the
experiment in question, which was to study how monkeys' brains develop
during menopause, was halted.

"It's one of the most severe actions that the committee has ever
taken," said Eric Sandgren, chair of a university committee that
oversees animal projects.

The school's primate research center is one of eight such federally
funded centers.

The documents show an unusual number of monkeys died or were injured
in 2001 and 2002 after being subjected to experiments in which needles
were used to inject chemicals into their brains while they were
confined in chairs. The precise number of monkeys that died was not
disclosed in the records released Monday.

The most serious violation of protocol involved leaving the animals
without supervision at least four times during the experiments,
Sandgren said. The rules called for someone to be present at all
times, and one of the animals died while the supervisor was at lunch,
the documents show.

Another serious infraction involved injecting drugs into the animals
that had not been approved, Sandgren said. Other violations included
giving larger-than-approved doses of drugs, records show.

Terasawa declined comment on Monday. Her work has led to a greater
understanding of how the brain functions during puberty and menopause,
said lab spokeswoman Jordana Lenon.

The documents were released as the animal rights group and the
university fight over the ownership of a piece of land in downtown
Madison that is sandwiched between two primate labs.

The group says it has a contract to buy the land to open a museum
about abuses in primate research, but the private owner is rethinking
the sale after the university offered him $1 million — $325,000 more
than protesters had agreed to pay.