Monkey business has activists fuming: Harvard experiment protest planned

Nov. 28--A controversial plan by NASA to zap more than two dozen squirrel monkeys with radiation -- and then test the toxic simians at Belmont's McLean Hospital as part of a Harvard Medical School project -- has animal-rights activists going ape, the Herald has learned.

"We're horrified, as most people will be," said Ashley Byrne, spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"The plans are to zap these monkeys with a dose of radiation. These monkeys will be forced to spend the rest of their lives doing a host of behavioral tasks to assess how the radiation damages their brains and their bodies over time."

The $1.75 million project calls for National Aeronautics and Space Administration researchers to blast 28 monkeys with gamma rays equivalent to three years of space travel in an attempt to gauge the effects of a mission to Mars on a human.

After the animals are radiated in a Long Island, N.Y., facility, plans call for them to be shipped to Belmont, where they would be monitored for the rest of their lives in McLean as part of a Harvard Medical School project.

PETA is planning a large protest at McLean on Friday. Harvard Medical School's Dr. Jack Bergman, who is in charge of the McLean project, declined to comment. Harvard officials did not respond to requests for comment.

NASA officials vigorously have defended the program, which will mark the agency's first monkey testing in years.

"The overall objective of the planned studies with the nonhuman primates is to help NASA predict neurobehavioral effects of space radiation, which are among the most poorly understood health risks for astronauts," NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs told SPACE.com. "Studies in nonhuman primates are essential to be able to best predict neurobehavioral effects of radiation on humans."

NASA officials also have insisted the monkeys won't be killed. But PETA representatives point out that previous NASA experiments on primates have left animals with fatal cancer and brain tumors.

The project still is awaiting final government approval, but PETA officials are hoping protests will block the monkey testing. The group also held a large-scale demonstration last week at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"It's easy to establish how space travel affects humans: Just study humans who've traveled to space," Byrne said. "It speaks volumes about humans' callous attitudes toward animals on our planet."

dwedge@bostonherald.com

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