PRIMATE PROTECTOR
Science, animals and ethics
Scientist-turned-ethicist and animal-welfare advocate Prof. John P. Gluck will be in Vancouver this Friday to give a public lecture on his new book, Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals: A primate scientist’s ethical journey.
The memoir describes Gluck’s personal journey of how his experiences as a primate research scientist caused him to ask an important question: whether the advances that he and his peers were making ever justified the suffering that their primate subjects experienced.
His conclusion was an overwhelming no. Gluck has since spent the last 40 years advocating for an end to the use of primates in research.
During the Vancouver event, Gluck will describe his career before, during and after his epiphany, and encourage attendees to re-think their attitudes toward
animal experiments, recommending enhanced ethical review and oversight of primate studies.
Gluck began his scientific career in the 1960s at the University of Wisconsin as a graduate student of Harry Harlow — the researcher that every psychologist scholar learns about for his studies into the effects of social isolation and maternal deprivation on primates.
He worked as a primate researcher both at the University of Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and within the Psychology Department at the University of Wisconsin, before taking a position at the University of New Mexico, and later at the university’s federally mandated Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which, in part, provides an ethical review process for animal research. From this position, Gluck garnered a broader insight into what he believes to be unjustifiable scientific experiments conducted on non-human primates.
In his book, Gluck describes how he woke up to the suffering that he and his colleagues were inflicting on primates within their own laboratories, subsequently causing him to abandon his career as an animal researcher, to become an ethicist and advocate for the end of using primates in invasive scientific research.
“Gluck is clear that when we evaluate what harms are going to be experienced by the animals in research, we need to go beyond the harms incurred by the experimental procedure itself, and have a greater appreciation for the lived experience of each individual,” said Elisabeth Ormandy, executive director of the Animals in Science Policy Institute.
When asked why we should be especially concerned about primates, Ormandy explained, “Because their emotional and cognitive needs cannot be met in a lab setting. Non-human primates in particular have extremely diminished lives in lab settings. We can’t possibly hope to replicate their preferred natural environment. There are similar concerns to those that arise with keeping cetaceans in captivity.”
According to the Canadian Council on Animal Care, 4,942 non-human primates were used for research, testing and teaching in Canada in 2015, which included cynomolgus monkeys and rhesus macaques. Ormandy said these numbers probably underestimate the number of animals used.
“The data only refers to institutions that report animal numbers to the CCAC. Private institutions are not obligated under the CCAC’s mandate to report their numbers,” she said. “But, it’s hard to know, there is a lack of transparency about the institutions under the CCAC mandate.”
The CCAC uses a five-point Ato-E scale to classify the invasiveness of animal experiments, with E being the category in which animals suffer most, procedures which cause severe pain near, at, or above the pain tolerance threshold of un-anesthetized conscious animals. According to Ormandy, in 2015, 55 primates were subjected to procedures within this category in Canada.