|
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS LEADING TO MULTIPLE COUNTS OF CRIMINAL ANIMAL
CRUELTY FILED AGAINST THE NIH'S "ALAMOGORDO PRIMATE FACILITY"
OPERATOR
Prepared by In Defense of Animals /
September 7th, 2004
1
| 2 | 3
| 4
| 5
| 6
| 7
| 8
| 9
| 10
| 11
| 12
| 13
| 14
| 15
| 16
| 17
| 18
| 19
| 20
2 
1981 - After leaving Holloman, Dr. Coulston establishes the White Sands Research Center toxicology lab on LaVelle Road in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Coulston will later advertise the availability of chimpanzees for the development of cosmetics and insecticides. White Sands and its 125 chimpanzees will eventually be merged into The Coulston Foundation.
1981 - Dr. Edward Taub, a researcher funded by the National Institutes of Health, is charged with multiple counts of criminal animal cruelty by Maryland prosecutors after investigators find 17 monkeys in appalling conditions. Taub is eventually found guilty of one count of cruelty against the primates, who become widely known as the "Silver Spring Monkeys." The Maryland Supreme Court overturns Taub's conviction on a technicality, finding in 1983 that the Maryland cruelty to animals statute was never intended to cover federally funded research. The Maryland legislature amends the statute to close this loophole the year after this decision.
The Taub prosecution marks the first time an animal researcher or laboratory has faced criminal cruelty charges. Until 2004 - when Otero County, New Mexico District Attorney Scot Key files criminal charges against the NIH's Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) contractor for multiple counts of alleged criminal cruelty committed against chimpanzees at the APF - there is only one other such case, filed in 1995 against an individual who worked at Hazelton Research Products in Michigan. Unlike the Taub or Hazelton cases, the criminal cruelty charges in New Mexico are filed for facility-wide institutional neglect allegedly committed by the NIH's contractor, Charles River Laboratories, Inc., as well as the facility director, veterinarian Dr. Rick Lee.
The Taub-"Silver Springs Monkey" case helps to launch People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Later in the decade, the NIH will blatantly renege on a promise not to conduct invasive research on the Silver Spring Monkeys by opening some of the monkeys' skulls and exposing their brains. The NIH's actions prompt outrage from members of Congress and the public.
2
1
| 2 | 3
| 4
| 5
| 6
| 7
| 8
| 9
| 10
| 11
| 12
| 13
| 14
| 15
| 16
| 17
| 18
| 19
| 20
|
