The primate is better off dead
While it was very sad to read Sandi Doughton’s article about the little macaque at the UW who died of starvation [“UW monkey starved to death in lab last year,” NWSaturday, Jan. 9], he is now free from the further pain of cruel experimentation, from loneliness and from lingering for years in cages.
I am still thankful to the USDA for reporting this tragedy. It is bad enough for these animals to go through cruel experimentation, but to be denied food day after day is just as cruel and inexcusable.
When lives are at stake — be it for humans or non-humans — caregivers must be above reproach in their work. Excuses like “a change in staffing and confusion over responsibilities” are so lame. With all the new technology available, the UW and other institutions doing vivisection must find alternatives.
It is preposterous to read that they have 700 primates in their Seattle labs and about 3,000 in their primate-breeding colonies in Louisiana and Texas. This sounds more like a booming business, undoubtedly with large grants for researchers for caging and staff and so far there have been no promises to cure illnesses.
Yet, this little macaque is better off dead.
— Claudine Erlandson, Shoreline
Basic care a basic necessity
We are meant to believe that research on animals is an unfortunate necessity regretfully undertaken by compassionate researchers for the “greater good of mankind.
Even if that were so — which it is not — surely the very least one could expect would be that during their miserable lives, the animals are subjected to as little suffering as possible outside the experiments for which they are being used. Yet here is an animal whose most basic care was repeatedly neglected.
It is terrible to think of this small being, whose entire life had been nothing but pain and misery, being bypassed for food day after day until he or she died of starvation. And if this is one story that came to light, how many others died when no one was looking, recording or caring enough to make it public?
This is but a tiny fraction of the terrible wrongs involved in this area of so-called science.
— Franziska M. Edwards, Seattle