Non-human primate testing is undeniably inhumane and cruel. However, I believe that it is a necessary evil that needs ethical improvement. While scientist are waiting for new alternative breakthroughs, they should also be in the process of adding enrichment activities when studying primates in order to get more true data and experiments. There’s no doubt primate testing can be a merciless task. Primates are often negligently cared for when testing is not taking place. For example, Fox news reported on an incident at Charles Rivers Laboratory were 30 monkeys lost their lives due to negligence (“Ghastly Slaughter of Research Monkeys, 1). They were basically cooked alive because an employee left a heater on and no employees thereafter noticed warning alarms for the room. Within the same company there have been other accidents where a monkey was accidentally sent through a cage washer adding to the 33 primate deaths in two years from this company alone (“Ghastly Slaughter of Research Monkeys, 1). Another facility, Primate Products, had a leaked photos of severely injured primates, including open head wounds (Burnside, 1). Primate cruelty is not only in the biomedical field, but in psychology as well. Starting the Harlow experiments, rhesus monkeys were …show more content…
Because universities put so much money and effort into research one would think they would want their methods available to the public so when students graduate notable scientist may want to work with them. This is not the case with Texas A&M where primate research is being kept from the public under the guise of “veterinarian-patient statue” (Cobler, 1). This means care logs and other medical records cannot be issued to even previous students working in the laboratory. Activist believe the public has a right to know how the laboratory works since tax dollars go to the publically funded