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E. Sander Connolly
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Neurological Surgery
212-305-0376
212-305-2026 (fax)
esc5@columbia.edu
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E. Sander Connolly is an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Columbia who has been conducting stroke experiments on baboons for years. It was the extreme suffering of the baboons after his surgeries that caused our veterinary whistleblower to contact the IACUC. PETA filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) based on the veterinarian's experience with Connolly's baboon victims. We are still awaiting a response from the NIH, the funding agency for Connolly's experiments.
Connolly causes strokes in the primates by removing their left eyeballs and using the empty eye sockets in their skulls to reach a critical blood vessel to their brains. A clamp is placed on a major blood supplier for varying amounts of time until the animal suffers a "stroke." Then Connolly attempts to treat the stroke with an experimental drug. One such drug, dehydroascorbic acid (DHA) was supplied by Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of Tarrytown, New York. A May 2001 news release issued by Progenics quoted Connolly: "The positive outcome of this study underscores the potential of DHA to protect patients against the debilitating consequences of stroke." The baboons would beg to differ.
This is Handsome, a baboon so named by a technician who loved him. Handsome was to be used in Connolly's stroke experiments but was reportedly rejected because of his size and a problem with chronic regurgitation. He was used instead in a cancer experiment - resulting in severe wounds to his head and back. Notice the Nazi-style tattoo on his leg.
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PETA's letter to NIH's OLAW recounts the post-surgical
outcomes for seven of Connolly's victims, and they are anything
but positive. For example: "On September 19, 2001, baboon B777's
left eye was removed, and a stroke was induced. The next morning,
it was noted that the animal could not sit up, that he was leaning
over, and that he could not eat. That evening, the baboon was still
slouched over and was offered food but couldn't chew. On September
21, 2001, the record shows that the baboon was 'awake, but no movement,
can't eat (chew), vomited in the a.m.' With no further notation
about consulting with a veterinarian, the record reads, 'At 1:30
p.m. the animal died in the cage.'"
Experts in neurology and veterinary anesthesiology reviewed the experimental protocol and were astounded by the waste and cruelty. Robert Hoffman, M.D., a Stanford-educated neurologist, pointed out that "the degree of suffering . experienced by these baboons is greater than average" for animals in Connolly's experiments and that the experience for the baboons is "obviously . terrifying."
He also condemned the experiments as "useless" and wasteful of limited research resources, citing 20 years of failed studies on animals in the area of after-stroke drug therapy. (Click here to read Dr. Hoffman's critique.) Carol Van Petten, M.D., is a neurologist with years of practice who also teaches at the University of Southern California Medical School. Dr. Van Petten commented on the inability of Connolly and his team to empathize with the suffering of the baboons and the general nature of the experiment: "There is very little probability that this study or others like it will produce results that will help in the prevention or treatment of stroke in humans.
Moreover, the inadequacy of animal supervision and care, and sloppy record-keeping exhibited by the experimental team under Dr. Connolly's supervision is an alarming example of failure to maintain minimal humane standards which I fear plagues much animal research." (Click here to read Dr. Van Petten's critique.) Most alarming are the comments of Nicholas Dodman, D.V.M., of Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in which he states that the anesthetics provided to the baboons during the removal of their eyes and the clamping of their blood vessels were inadequate! (Click here to read Dr. Dodman's critique.) Eye removal is so painful that human eye surgeons give morphine to their patients for up to three days after surgery.
On February 3, 2003, PETA sent letters to some famous Columbia graduates, informing them of the baboon stroke experiments and the complaint that we had filed with the government. One of those letters was sent to David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA, who is also the chair of Columbia University's Board of Trustees. On April 8, 2003, we received a letter from Harvey Colten, M.D., vice president and senior associate dean for translational research at Columbia to whom Mr. Stern had sent a copy of our alumni letter. Colten wrote, "We can also advise you that a call by your organization to halt this study until there is an investigation into the treatment of animals used in the research is unnecessary. No experiments under this protocol have been performed since Columbia began its own investigation; at the request of the University, the principal investigator of the study agreed not to perform additional experiments under this protocol until the investigation is complete." But what would have happened had the whistleblowing veterinarian not been in the picture? Given the fact that others at Columbia had seen the horrifying results of these experiments for several years prior, we can take a good guess and say that nothing would have happened to stop Connelly from inflicting cruelty for as long as he received money to do so.
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