Photos from a 2005 undercover investigation at contract testing firm and primate supplier. Covance Laboratories.  The macaques above
are used for drug testing at Covance before they are eventually sent to labs like the one at UMC and UCHC to be abused and killed.
The Campaign
Editor's note (1/2007): The current campaign stems from the revelation in November 2005  
that three rhesus monkeys were being confined at the University of Connecticut Health
Center (UCHC) in Farmington, CT. The animals were being used as part of a neuroscience
experiment by researcher David Waitzman, graduate assistant Jason Cromer and
colleague William Loftus.  Although the specific research protocol we were targeting has
been terminated, the UCHC has yet to agree to a permanent moratorium on nonhuman
primate research.  Phase 2 of our campaign (beginning January 2007) will be focused on
convincing the UCHC to enact this ban as well as having former UCHC monkey Mowgli,
released from the University of Mississippi Medical Center (where he was transferred
when Waitzman's work ended) and sent to sanctuary. CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION!!

Questions about the propriety of the research were initially raised in November 2005, when the
UConn Animal Rights Collective (UConn ARC) discovered that, for the last fifteen years, UCHC
faculty member Dr. David Waitzman had engaged in federally funded ($1.7 mil) neuroscience
research that entailed drilling holes into the heads of otherwise healthy monkeys, implanting
steel springs in their eyes, intentionally inflicting brain damage and measuring its effects on
eye movements. In the last 18 months, three monkeys have been killed at the facility.  Our
group has spent the last year researching Waitzman’s lab and publications, collecting over
4,000 petition signatures, organizing protests, writing letters and submitting reports to the
USDA.  

According to new and existing documents released by the USDA and UCHC through the
Freedom of Information Act, four USDA inspections conducted at the primate lab in the
Farmington facility from November 2005 to October 2006 resulted in eighteen citations for
violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act.  Among the improprieties identified in the
inspection reports were the researchers’ inability to avoid causing trauma and physical harm
when handling animals, the failure to employ personnel who were appropriately qualified and
trained to handle nonhuman primates, a failure to provide appropriate sedatives to animals, a
failure to painlessly euthanize an animal who would otherwise experience severe or chronic
pain.  Additionally, in March 2006, an anonymous letter was submitted to the animal care
committee (ACC) by a UCHC veterinary technician charging one of Waitzman’s research
assistants, Dr. William Loftus, with being “careless, impatient” and a “visibly not concerned
with the well-being of the animals.”

Troublingly, all of these violations were initially noted either by UConn ARC or the USDA
inspector.  The UCHC’s internal oversight committee failed to identify any of these instances of
concern on it’s own.  And of equal interest is that, in light of these problems, a UCHC report
from September 28, 2006 notes that the facility’s full animal care committee (ACC) voted down
(3-7)  a proposed institution-wide animal research monitoring program that would perform
ongoing reviews of approved protocols to ensure compliance.  This issue of insufficient
oversight was raised by the National Institute of Health’s compliance oversight director in an
October 2006 letter to UCHC Associate VP for Research Administration, Dr. Leonard
Paplauskas.  This sequence of events leads us to believe that were it not for our interest as a
concerned citizen, none of the improprieties that have come to light would have ever been
identified and these monkeys’ death would have been completely in vain.

These repeated USDA citations also led to the formation of three separate internal animal care
subcommittees at UCHC that investigated Waitzman’s lab during 2006. They also found,
among other things, that the researchers knowingly performed unauthorized procedures, were
employing unauthorized staff and that errors in drug doses were the result of “careless
mistakes.”  

The subcommittee has forbidden the use of any data collected during experiments in which
unapproved procedures were performed.  

Of greatest consequence is that the above violations contributed directly to the tragic deaths of
two rhesus monkeys in Waitzman’s lab.  A monkey named Cornelius experienced a stroke as
a result of the surgical procedures performed on him and died after suffering from a grand mal
seizure and cardiac arrest while restrained in an experiment chair in November 2005.
Goodman has submitted an official complaint to the USDA requesting a comprehensive
investigation of this monkey’s death as well as for a fine to be levied against the UCHC for
negligence.  Another monkey, Lips, had to be euthanized in August 2006 after Waitzman
injected an unapproved substance directly into his brain that caused paralysis in his left side
and tremors in his hands.   Additionally, in March 2006, a third monkey, Mowgli, was
discovered by a UCHC veterinarian to have severe facial hemorrhaging and bleeding eyes
after researchers used a metal pole and chain link collar to move him from his cage to an
experiment chair.  The whistleblower from the UCHC’s animal care staff described Mowgli’s
face as looking “like he had gotten hit in the head a couple times with a baseball bat.”

Despite the evidence that continued to mount against the lab, Dr. Peter Deckers, Vice
President of Health Affairs at UCHC, UConn President Philip Austin and Dr. Margaret Snyder of
the National Institute of Health offered unwavering defenses of Waitzman’s lab against
Goodman’s ongoing accusations of misconduct well into 2006.  Similarly, in the
aformentioned October 2006 letter from the National Institute of Health, UCHC was cited for
not reporting, as required by federal law, any of these violations to Waitzman’s funding agency
until the end of September 2006.  Either the Health Center attempted to cover-up the situation
surrounding these monkeys’ deaths and abuse or the UCHC’s IACUC and senior
administration are so riddled with ineptitude that they were unable to identify the alarming
information in the monkeys’ medical records uncovered by UConn ARC, and later confirmed by
USDA inspector Dr. Paula Gladue.

On August 31, 2006, two days after a focused USDA inspection that resulted in four new
citations for AWA violations, David Waitzman withdrew his protocol and ended his
experiments.  At this time, university administrators directed UCHC Public Safety officials to
restrict access to the room housing the remaining monkey to veterinary staff only.  On
September 6, 2006, approval for the research was officially terminated, effectively ending
nonhuman primate research at UCHC.

In addition to being cruel and unethical, the research is neither necessary nor useful for the
treatment of any degenerative human neurological disorder. The anatomical differences
between humans and monkeys are vast. Plus, even in healthy macaques, confining and
restraining them confounds any neurological data researchers collect. As a testament to all of
this, in over 15 years of tax-funded research and after spending upwards of $2 million,
Waitzman has not produced one piece of clinically relevant data.

Given the modern technological advancements in the study of neuroscience, non-invasive,
non-animal alternatives now exist as replacements for the archaic research being conducting
at the UCHC. However, Dr. Waitzman and the UCHC administration have ignored our best
efforts, and the suggestions of their own internal oversight committee, to introduce them to
humane alternatives to the fruitless work being funded by our tax dollars as U.S. citizens and
CT residents.

Ending NHP research would benefit human medicine by halting the flow of unreliable data
from it, and by diverting research funds to more appropriate and promising methods. These
include batteries of human-based tests that provide reliable and relevant information on which
to base further research and translate laboratory findings to the clinic: microarrays and other
DNA technologies; proteomics and metabolomics; mathematical and computer modelling;
epidemiology; human clinical research; myriad in vitro molecular biological techniques;
microfluidics devices; scanning technologies, microdosing etc.... in short, technologies that
have demonstrably contributed to human medicine.

TAKE ACTION TO END UCHC NONHUMAN PRIMATE RESEARCH PERMANENTLY!!
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All sentient animals (human and
non-) have an inherent value that
exists outside of their utility to
others.  We recognize this value
and afford these individuals the
right to be treated in a manner
that is respectful of it.  To act in
a way that reduces animals
(human and non-) to mere
resources for others to exploit
for food, experimentation,
clothing or entertainment is a
violation of this right and it is our
obligation to insure that such
exploitation does not continue.