UW investigated for unauthorized monkey surgeries

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UW investigated for unauthorized monkey surgeries

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Story Published: Feb 26, 2008 at 11:15 PM PST

 

Story Updated: Feb 27, 2008 at 11:49 AM PST

By Tracy Vedder

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SEATTLE -- In a hidden part of the University of Washington campus,

hundreds of monkeys live and die for research. They undergo

experimental surgeries and tests until their usefulness is over.

 

The federal government pays the university millions for this research.

But a Problem Solvers investigation has uncovered that some of those

millions are in jeopardy and the university is under investigation

because of unauthorized surgeries on monkeys.

 

Every year, UW scientists use hundreds of monkeys -- from babies to

adults -- for all types of research that may help thousands of people.

 

Primate Center Director Dave Anderson offers one example of how their

research helps: " We have other investigators in our Primate Center

looking at ways to address, say, people who have strokes or people who

have spinal chord injuries. "

 

But over the past year and a half, one group of researchers at the

university has been at the center of a series of investigations for

performing dozens of unauthorized surgeries on monkeys.

 

" I think these are very serious violations, " says PETA Primatologist

Debra Durham. " They're surgeries on animals' heads and on their eyes. "

 

Researchers implant coils on the monkeys' eyeballs, thread wires up

the skull and put a metal cylinder - sometimes two - into holes

drilled in the monkey's skull.

 

Through public disclosure requests we obtained thousands of pages of

internal e-mails and reports from the UW and federal agencies. Some of

the surgeries were approved, many more were not. We found evidence

that some monkeys underwent a dozen or more surgeries, as the eye

coils and head chambers were removed and replaced, again and again.

 

Durham has read the monkeys' medical records and says there is

evidence many of them suffered. Describing one monkey, she says he,

" pulls out his hair, he self-mutilates, he drinks his own urine. "

 

Federal law requires all of the UW's animal researchers and

experiments to be approved and enforced by the university's animal

oversight group, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee

(IACUC). Nona Phillips, executive secretary of the committee, says

their number-one concern is " humane treatment of the animals in the

course of scientifically necessary research. "

 

But there is evidence the IACUC ignored warnings about problems with

too many surgeries on monkeys, and that even when a federal agency

found protocol violations the committee chose to close the

investigation rather than look deeper.

 

It started nearly two years ago when an international accrediting

agency, the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory

Animal Care International, put the University on probation. That was

primarily for problems with its buildings and facilities -- the

association's main focus.

 

But AAALAC also questioned the number of experimental surgeries on

monkeys, as internal e-mails we found clearly show. When asked how

UW's IACUC responded to those questions, Phillips said, " Well, AAALAC

didn't give us a deficiency or anything like that about the number of

surgeries performed on any given animal, it's up to the IACUC to

approve those. "

 

So the UW's oversight committee did nothing. Then, five months later

at the end of October 2006, the USDA found that three of UW researcher

Albert Fuchs' monkeys had had many more surgeries than the rules allowed.

 

As required, IACUC's Nona Phillips reported the violations with a

phone call to UW Compliance Officer Sue Clausen. The Problem Solvers

found handwritten notes of that conversation, where Clausen writes

" it's probably the tip of the iceberg, " and, referring to Phillips,

" she's going to keep her head in sand on this. "

 

When asked to what that referred, Phillips replied, " I really don't

know Tracy. "

 

So we asked Compliance Officer Clausen.

 

" I literally stood and wrote notes while she talked, " Clausen said,

adding that the notes aren't her deductions or inferences. What she

wrote down, she said, are the words Nona Phillips actually used. But

Clausen claims what Phillips said isn't what she meant.

 

When we asked Clausen if it's okay for Phillips as the head of the

UW's Office of Animal Welfare to say that she's going to keep her head

in the sand, Clausen replied, " I'm saying that she used terminology

that didn't reflect her intent to not do the right thing. To presume

that any of this implies that she's not looking out for the animals,

that she's not doing her job is, well, ridiculous. "

 

But after the USDA found violations, no one from the IACUC looked to

see if there were more unauthorized surgeries.

 

Phillips admits the oversight committee didn't examine the rest of the

monkeys in Dr. Fuchs' protocol, they didn't look at the other monkeys'

medical records, they didn't check his lab logs and they didn't look

at any other researchers to see if there were other problems.

 

Phillips said they didn't look further, " because we had no reason to

think that the USDA had not identified all of the issues. "

 

The university's IACUC closed the case on Dr. Fuchs with a letter of

reprimand.

 

PETA's Durham called the matter shameful, and believes the University

did put its head in the sand. " And when they choose to ignore

violations, they're choosing to ignore suffering, " she said.

 

PETA complained to the National Institutes of Health, which pays

hundreds of millions of dollars to the University of Washington for

animal research.

 

The NIH reopened the investigation and, only then did IACUC find that

instead of one researcher and three monkeys subjected to too many

experimental surgeries, there were 14 monkeys, five UW researchers,

and 41 unauthorized surgeries.

 

The UW insists it did everything it should.

 

" No one was trying to cover it up, " says Primate Center Director

Anderson, " everyone was being absolutely forthright and honest about it. "

 

The researchers under investigation brought in nearly $9 million in

federal grant money. The NIH says it could be a couple more months

before they determine how much of that money the university has to pay

back.

 

Since the feds reopened their investigation, the UW has launched its

own new oversight effort with paid staff to visit each research lab,

examine their log books, and check their animals. But there are

between 600 and 700 animal experiments going on at any one time at the

UW, so it's an enormous task.

 

 

View the full list of animals examined in the investigation:

 

Part One

 

Part Two

 

For video and article:

http://www.komotv.com/news/local/15988507.html