Animal rights activists held one of a series of monthly presentations showcasing UW-Madison primate experiments Tuesday. The program, Primate Vivisection A to Z, focuses on individual researchers in alphabetical order, with the aim of highlighting alleged animal abuse going on in the National Primate Research Center located on campus.
'Our goal is to educate people. This is an opportunity to get students and the general public more aware of the issues about how we treat animals and things we do to our fellow creatures,' said Dan Stuntebeck, a member of the Madison Coalition for Animal Rights. MCAR, along with The Alliance for Animals and The Primate Freedom Project sponsor the program.
The program criticizes primate experimentation as cruel and unnecessary. The activists said they find the process unethical because of similarities between human and primate behavior, thinking and feeling. They also argue the money used for primate experiments would be more wisely spent on human research.
This months meeting, themed letter K, focused on the research of Dr. Paul Kaufman and center director Dr. Joseph Kemnitz. Kaufman performs experiments on the eyes of monkeys, while Kemnitz has been criticized for controversies that occurred under his leadership. PETA has recently ranked UW-Madison as the 'worst laboratory,' citing secrecy, high rates of primate death and disregard for protocol.
No one from the university was present at the meeting, but plans are in the works for a public debate sometime in the second half of March.
Dr. Robert Kaufman, a retired UW-Madison professor of meat and animal science and an expert in animal welfare and rights, defended animal testing.
'We are raising these animals for the purposes of experimentation so that we can get better answers to curing ills that people have. If we didn't have that, our science would not move forward,' he said. 'However, this does not give us rights to treat animals badly.'
At the meeting, Jeremy Beckham, a member of the Primate Freedom Project, encouraged public involvement in such issues. 'Our goal goes beyond promoting awareness. Public disapproval is not enough. You have to get people active out there on the streets and doing demonstrations,' he said. 'We want to change minds, but more importantly, we want to change lives by getting people involved.'
