PETA FILES FORMAL COMPLAINT WITH D.A. AGAINST COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS

PETA has filed a formal complaint with the New York County District Attorney’s Office, asking that criminal charges of cruelty to animals be brought against an animal experimenter and other officials at Columbia University for their role in a series of induced-stroke experiments on baboons that took place between July 2001 and September 2002. At a news conference, former Columbia University veterinarian Catherine Dell’Orto gave a first-hand account of the abuses that she witnessed while working in Columbia University laboratories.

In the complaint, PETA alleges that head researcher E. Sander Connolly, three oversight officials, and members of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee all violated state law while conducting experiments in which baboons’ eyes were cut out and the blood supply to their brains was cut off with clamps inserted into their eye sockets. Under state law, anyone who “tortures, maims, mutilates, or kills any animal” is guilty of a misdemeanor. While the law exempts “properly” conducted experiments, PETA’s 10-page complaint establishes that the Columbia University experiments were not properly conducted and, therefore, are not exempt.

PETA contends that the Columbia University protocol failed to provide for adequate anesthesia and that the vivisectors failed to provide the post-surgical care that they themselves had claimed the baboons would receive. Affidavits from neurologists, filed along with PETA’s complaint, contend that the experiments, which were funded with public money, are unlikely to benefit anyone because of the vast physiological differences between baboons and humans, as well as the radical difference in timing between the treatment given to human stroke victims and the treatment given to the baboon subjects.

Click here to view the complaint.