Seattle Press on Line - UW Animal Care Committee Investigates Monkey Experiment

UW Animal Care Committee Investigates Monkey Experiment

By Laurel Holliday

May 09, 2002 -- In 1993, Julie M. Worlein received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Developmental Psychology and Animal Behavior. After earning her degree, she did a post doctorate at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center where Mark Laudenslager, Ph.D., has been conducting maternal deprivation studies with macaque monkeys for over 18 years.

According to records obtained by a Seattle citizen, which were subsequently turned over to The Seattle Press, Laudenslager and Worlein arranged for the University of Colorado to subcontract some of Laudenslager's work to Worlein who, in 1996, moved her portion of the maternal deprivation project to the University of Washington's Regional Primate Research Center (RPRC).

Worlein studies the long-term effects on monkeys of separating them from their mothers for two weeks when they are six months old. Laudenslager ships maternally deprived monkeys and "control" monkeys, who were not separated from their mothers, to Worlein at the UW RPRC when they're 42 months old. Members of Worlein's research team inject the monkeys with SIV--a simian equivalent of HIV. Then they are caged separately.

Laudenslager and Worlein hypothesized that the stress of taking the baby monkeys away from their mothers for two weeks would so adversely affect their immune systems that they would be more likely to develop full blown Simian AIDS than control monkeys who are injected with SIV, but who are not separated from their mothers. In a report on their project, the researchers state that they hope to learn how maternal separation may affect "the development of and course of AIDS in children and adolescents" by doing numerous physiological tests on the monkeys to measure hormonal and immune responses.

Among the UW records received by The Seattle Press are copies of e-mails which reveal problems with the Laudenslager/Worlein experiment. One, with the subject heading "Monkey Blood," was sent to Worlein on January 21, 1999, by Michael B. Agy. It reads, in part:

" ... it sounds like there were other problems besides. No numbers, blood received in a paper bag without any identification (project number, name, telephone number, etc.) ... Please be certain that any blood that is transported ... is packaged in the lock-tight boxes to minimize accident potential. Sorry about that, we will get it together ... one of thyese (sic) days."

In March, Worlein e-mailed Laudenslager, "Yes I've rattled cages--this has been an absolutely hideous week--nagging Mike has only been one of the problems. I've also printed out the NK [natural killer] data files and am looking at them now. Some stuff looks OK, some doesn't. There still are not notes as to where the data are inaccurate because of the problem with the scintillation counter...."

In April, Worlein lamented in an e-mail to Laudenslager "...we are running about one year behind as we should have had results from our first subject at the end of the first year not the end of the second year."

In June, Worlein e-mailed Laudenslager, "I've been at Mike Agy's lab for the last two days working on straightening out the NK data--I have a statement to make AAAAARGH. It's going to take me at least one more day and possibly two to make some sense of the data. Unfortunately there are going to be lots of missing data points. Once I get some sense of how much of it we can use I'll see about getting some money back!!!! ... Lisa screwed some stuff up so I've had to go retreive (sic) the original observations and resummarize. I've spent most of the last two weeks fixing other people's screw ups and I can tell you that it hasn't left me in the best of moods."

Dr. Pat Haight, a research psychologist in Arizona, has studied the documents from Worlein's lab obtained through the public records request. She says, "it is not clear that any of the first nine monkeys sent to Worlein's lab contracted Simian AIDS after inoculation."

If, in fact, most or all of Worlein's monkeys did not contract Simian AIDS, it begs the question of what this whole experiment is about.

In addition, Dr. Haight points out that, by the researchers' own admission, data for the Worlein project was lost or destroyed by technicians in 1999, many observations are missing, data may be wholly or partially unreliable because of an improperly calibrated scintillation counter, and, in 1999, the UW part of the experiment was already a year behind.

Of the 17 monkeys which records indicate have been sent to Worlein's UW laboratory, 13 have been euthanized--none because of any symptoms that can definitely be linked to Simian Aids. Some that have been "sacrificed" (biomedical research language) showed signs of possible self-mutilation like severe bruising, a crushed finger that had to be amputated, toenails that were ripped off, and broken bones. Euthanasia records indicate that two appeared to have been anorexic prior to their deaths.

After the records from Worlein's lab were brought to their attention, UW Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) members Melvin B. Dennis Jr., D.V.M. and Dr. Nona Phillips said they will begin an investigation of the study, beginning with interviewing the people who wrote the above e-mails. This is standard operating procedure whenever they are made aware of a possible problem with an experiment.

At press time, Worlein was unavailable for comment about the e-mails and other laboratory documentation received through the public records request. A UW spokesman said that she will be "unavailable until May 12." University spokesperson L.G. Blanchard, director of Health Sciences and Medical Affairs, News and Community Relations, said, "... These email exchanges are part of the interaction among research staff who are committed to maintaining the highest quality standards for their work. As in any human endeavor, sometimes things don't go as they should. The important thing, as this snapshot of email exchanges appear (sic) to show, is to care about the fact that problems pop up and most importantly, that they get fixed."

Dr. Marc Bekoff, professor of Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, author of Minding Animals and coauthor of a forthcoming book written with Jane Goodall, says of Laudenslager's and Worlein's experiments, "I am against this sort of research, but if it's going to be done, then researchers must adhere to the strictest of ethical guidelines. Clearly this was not the case in these studies, as admitted by Dr. Worlein. These researchers should be ashamed of themselves for these heinous breaches in protocol and for conducting such shabby science. They are exemplars of just why so many people--and more and more each day--are critical of the enterprise of science."

Dr. Wayne Johnson, a psychotherapist in Seattle and a member of the Board of Directors of Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN) says that to focus on the details of what went wrong in these experiments is to miss the point.

"It's rare that protocols are suspended at UW," he says, "but the fact is that these protocols shouldn't be done in the first place. From the point of view of NARN, we don't think that creatures who are vital and alive should be killed for research. Each of those mice have a right to live, as does each of the dogs and the cats and the primates."

Susanna Cunningham, researcher and chair of UW's IACUC, says that she hopes people will understand that the people who serve on Animal Care and Use Committees do so because they care about animals. She said in a May 3 interview that she thinks she and Johnson have more in common than they disagree about. "We both care about animals," she said. We just have a different philosophy."

Call it "a philosophy" or whatever you like, it still adds up to thousands of animals who are incarcerated and die at the University of Washington every year.

As an example, Phillips said UW research labs "use" over 50,000 mice annually. A spreadsheet she provided to The Seattle Press shows that thousands of them die of "unexpected" causes, unrelated to an experiment. She said that records are not kept on the numbers of animals of various species who are euthanized in the course of UW experiments. Among the "sacrificed" are mice, rats, birds, frogs, salmonids, primates, bats, other fish, salamanders, dogs, rabbits, gerbils, snakes, geckos, hamsters, and cats.

Laurel Holliday is a freelance writer and photographer who is a frequent contributor to The Seattle Press.

Reader Comments

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Julie & Jenna	Mar 21, 2003	School	Students 8th grade
We are doing a project on animals and the horrible expirements that are done on them. The problem with the monkey expirement is that I Love Monkeys.. this is soo horrible that they would do these terrible things to them. We don't like the idea that these so called 'people' would do somthing to harm any part of nature. They shouldn't be considered people or the human race! They should stop this because we really likes animals and they should be treated the same way we are. Animals don't deserve to suffer for something we need or want. dont forget--WE LOVE MONKEYS...STOP THE HORRIBLE ACTS ON THESE ANIMALS!!!!


Danielle	Oct 08, 2003	Greenbrier High School	student and animal shelter vol
I find it disturbing that adults are basically doing animal abuse in the name of science. So many people seem to think that animals have no feleings, when in fatc, they do. I acknowledge the fact that this is done to try and help humans, but people, this is the 21st century. its called computers! Also, many results from animals are different then what happens to the human. Over 51% of problems seen in a product are unnoticable until they are out on the market.


Becky	Apr 08, 2004	Seattle	HIV support agent I work with
Please some of you people are under educated on factual information. COMPUTERS CANNOT SIMULATE A GENOME NOR DNA NOR HUMAN LONGEVITY AND A LONGETUDINAL STUDY. IF it could than I would say ACP and NIH and the ACC would not allow these studies. As a person living with AIDS, from a transfusion after a life threatening car accident, I appriciate the research, I don't want to die. I am still young. I mean it is bad enough trying to get through this day to day. I agree some studies are ludicris and obsolete, but some aren not. Would you rather the government draft humans into research subject positions like they did for the military?? Or should they not do the research and let poeple all over AFRICA, EUROPE, USA, CANDA, RUSSIA, and AUSTRALIA die??? I love animals and I know they have feelings, but until some new method is developed that will eliminate the usage of animals for testing, I PRAY they don't stop research. I did not chose this for my life as many others in the WORLD. We are not obsolete. We matter. And if you lived my life, you would pray for research as well. But you are not infected, you are not dying, and you do not understand the millions of us that are dying.


tionna m	Mar 31, 2005	seattle washington	nona
I think animal abuse should stop and that is not even nice well anyways you need to help people that got thatg promblem well holler