One Voice demands to know where are the monkeys of the Max Planck Institute

Along
with other European animal advocates, One Voice wants to put an end
to the ambiguity surrounding laboratory monkeys who survive the Max
Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (IMP) in Tübingen
(Germany).

This
international mobilization follows a request for access rights in
July 2017 by One Voice, Ärzte-gegen-Tierversuche eV (Germany) and
Cruelty Free International (United Kingdom) to the authorities of the
Länder of Baden -Wuerttemberg. Indeed, as part of this request, only
one laboratory, that of the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium),
officially recognized that its Department of Neuroscience had
received five monkeys from the IMP. No other animal testing centre
has agreed to make public the origins, current location and treatment
of primates that they have received from the IMP.

In
2014, the IMP was at the centre of controversy, following the
disclosure of poignant videos revealing the immense suffering of
primates, forced to participate, sometimes for several years, in
neuroscience research involving invasive surgery of the brain, severe
water deprivation and various physical and psychological constraints
(1). On these unsustainable images, eight monkeys from French farms
had been identified. One is dead, but Leah, Hugo, Tom, Lisa, Max,
Mila and Lucie can still be saved. One Voice has since been
campaigning for their release and their safe placement in a
sanctuary.

Following
an international mobilization, in 2016, the IMP announced to stop
their controversial experiments on primates. One Voice,
Ärzte-gegen-Tierversuche e.V. and Cruelty Free International,
supported by Jane Goodall, had demanded that surviving monkeys be
released into a sanctuary. No information on their future has,
however, been made public. It is feared that the IMP has made the
decision to send them to other laboratories in Europe for further
experiments.

Muriel
Arnal, President of One Voice, strongly urges: “It is
unacceptable that the place of detention and the fate of these
monkeys be kept a secret. IMP is a European laboratory, financed by
public funds. While opinion in Germany and Europe has been stirred by
the suffering endured by primates in this establishments, while the
animal research industry claims to act with transparency, we believe
that the public finally has the right to know what has happened to
them.”

Lack of transparency and contested experiments

In
addition to the ethical and moral issues raised by primate
experimentation, the associations also challenge the scientific
relevance to that of humans, such as neuroscience work because of the
differences between our brain and that of monkeys.

Muriel
Arnal recalls that: “A recent scientific study has found that
the relevance of data collected by researchers using primate
experiments in regards to humans has been overestimated (2). This
study identifies several alternative methods adapted to neuroscience,
more ethical and
more useful for medical progress and directly applicable to humans.
But they are neglected by researchers who still continue their
experiments on primates, research which is rarely crucial towards a
real medical breakthrough and in the mean time they continue to kill
a large number of primates.”

NOTES:

1. Monkeys at the Max Planck
Institute for Biological Cybernetics have been subjected to highly
invasive surgery by implanting electrodes and / or recording devices
into their brains, deprived of water to be able to constrain them, to
make them obey. Physical coercion (use of neck collars and spikes)
for the transfer from the cages and into a restraining device (“chair
for primates”) which holds them by the neck and the body in an
uncomfortable and abnormal position. Thirsty, thus reduced to
immobility, the monkeys are exposed – up to 5 hours a day, five days
a week – to screen images and different stimuli while the researchers
record the data of their brain. The same monkeys, held for years, are
again reused in this research.

2.
Bailey J & Taylor K. (2016). Nonhuman primates in neuroscience
research: the facts going against its scientific necessity. ATLA 44,
43-69)