From Bioprepwatch.com...
Administrators at OSU decided not to let the project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, commence as the primates being used would be euthanized. An internal faculty committee spent more than a year preparing protocol for the care and use of the primates...
OSU administrators said in a statement that, "this research was not in the best interest of the university. The testing of lethal pathogens on primates would be a new area for OSU that is controversial and is outside our current research programs.
"OSU is focused on enhancing and expanding its existing research strengths including our ongoing programs in bioterrorism research. The proposed work would have distracted from those efforts.”
I think this is the first time I've personally heard of a University pulling away from primate research due to controversy.
1 comment:
Hi Ana,
This is an interesting development, and from what I read in the article to which you refer, it would seem to me as though they are two genuine moral sides to this story.
On one hand, it would be a great pity to have to see the primates euthanized, even though it is more than understandable why indeed this would be the case if the research went ahead.
On the other hand, counter-bioterrorism research is of absolute critical importance, and given the similarities in the makeup of primates to humans which is mentioned in the article, I could certainly understand why scientists would have been enthusiastic to see this research go ahead in spite of the cost to the individual primates involved.
It's a difficult moral issue.
In any rate, I hope that the university is able to find appropriate alternative research methods so as to assist in the development of effective counter-bioterrorism measures.
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