To the Editor:
Re “Today’s Lab Rats of Obesity: Furry, Fattened Couch Potatoes” (front page, Feb. 20):
I was disappointed to read about yet another study that causes monkeys to become obese and forces them to live alone in tiny cages, in a constant state of boredom.
I remember a proposal for a similar study when I worked in a primate lab over a decade ago; even then, it was frivolous and inhumane.
It’s time for a hard look at these facilities.
Oregon and the seven other National Primate Research Centers are given more than $1 billion in taxpayer financing each year
Congress has been proposing to slash budgets, and the National Institutes of Health director, Dr. Francis S. Collins, is making major changes at the agency. As a result, the primate centers have been trying to make the case that their research is crucial. If this is the best that they’ve got, then they should be worried.
Kathleen Conlee
Washington, Feb. 21, 2011
The writer is director of program management, animal research issues, at the Humane Society of the United States.
To the Editor:
Scientists have identified many of the factors in human obesity and diabetes—food, inactivity, boredom and high-fructose corn syrup. But instead of using this knowledge to address these issues, they use it to grotesquely fatten up monkeys, experiment on them with drugs, euthanize and dissect them.
The rationalizations for these animal experiments by some scientists and drug companies are little more than attempts to justify their inhumanity and greed in service to a questionable purpose.
What is their purpose? To develop drugs that treat the “conditions” of obesity, instead of its causes. Prevention is not mentioned. The whole point of sacrificing these animals, in other words, seems to be to allow obese humans to not have to worry about making unhealthy choices, as long as they shell out plenty of money to drug companies for their “obesity pill.”
Karin Barnaby
Sea Cliff, N.Y., Feb. 21, 2011
To the Editor:
How ironic it is to read that we, the supposed being with higher intelligence, must cage and overfeed monkeys to learn about obesity, an epidemic that these same monkeys know how to avoid when left on their own.
Sharon Aucoin
North Andover, Mass., Feb. 20, 2011
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 