NORFOLK, Va. — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) staged a protest at noon Wednesday outside of Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) to demand they no longer experiment on baboons for human research.
"This has been going on in our community since 1980 and there's no excuse for it," Daphna Nachminovitch, senior vice president of the cruelty investigations department with PETA said.
PETA is alleging that four mother olive baboons were "quietly killed" by researchers at EVMS, in what they call "repeat violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act."
EVMS issued a response in advance of the protest discussing the necessity of animal testing for the purposes of preventing human diseases and death — specifically with the pregnancy disorder preeclampsia.
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"Our research, which cannot be performed directly on humans, through laboratory simulations, or using other animal models, has resulted in significant novel discoveries that substantially advanced the field toward understanding the cause of preeclampsia and its complications, including preterm birth and fetal growth restriction," said Dr. Alfred Abuhamad, president, provost and dean at EVMS. "The research has employed targeted gene therapy and other treatment modalities with the ultimate goal to help save mothers and babies."
PETA is focusing its protest on one researcher named in its press release who, they say, "has tortured and killed hundreds of baboons in pregnancy experiments, injecting them with hormones and cutting out and killing their babies at various stages of development."
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They included the names of four of the baboons they say were "killed" by this EVMS researcher after PETA offered to bring the baboons to a sanctuary.
"We found out just a couple of weeks ago that instead of allowing us to place these elderly baboons whose bodies are the equivalent of a 70-year-old woman's body to place them in a sanctuary, he killed them," Nachminovitch, said. "He killed two of them in February and two in March."
EVMS said bringing the animals to a sanctuary was not possible due to the research.
"This particular research project requires that the animals be euthanized in order to obtain data that is critical to understanding the progression of the disease and its impact on maternal internal organs," said Abuhamad.
Nachminovitch said through a FOIA request PETA has learned no baboons are currently being held at EVMS but she said they are still requesting for the lab to be shut down.
