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NASA’s radiation monkey tests – unecessary, cruel, wasteful, ? stupid

NASA’s Wrong Stuff Aysha Akhtar MD, MPH THE HUFFINGTON POST 16 Feb 2010 “………..I am bewildered by NASA’s plan to squander nearly $2 million in taxpayer money on radiation experiments on monkeys.NASA has announced it is funding an experiment in which as many as 30 squirrel monkeys will be exposed to harmful ionizing radiation here on Earth.

The purported goal of this project is to observe how radiation exposure during extended trips through deep space may affect astronauts’ neurochemistry, cognition, and behavior. Ultimately, the experiments are poorly planned and a far cry from the real life conditions humans would be confronted with in space.

On long trips to space, astronauts are continuously exposed to low levels of radiation, but the monkeys in the NASA experiment will be exposed to a single, large dose of radiation over a period of just a few minutes. The biological effects of these two very different kinds of exposure vary substantially.

According to government documents, after the radiation exposure at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the monkeys will be taken to a Harvard facility where they will be individually confined to steel cages. They will be strapped into restraint chairs and forced to perform behavioral tasks like pressing levers or touching a computer screen in response to visual stimuli. This will go on for five days a week for at least four years, allowing the experimenters to observe how the radiation exposure causes the animals’ physical and mental health to deteriorate. The monkeys will spend the rest of their lives in cages. NASA says there are no further plans for them at this time, but the radiation study could be renewed in four years or the monkeys may be used in additional experiments later on……….
Additionally — and here’s the real problem — this experiment will only help tell us how the monkey brain is affected by radiation, not the human brain. While monkeys are intelligent and social creatures and share many characteristics with humans, key differences exist between the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of monkeys and humans………..
Four decades of radiation experiments on monkeys have cost thousands of animals their lives and taxpayers millions of dollars, yet have provided hardly any useful information about the effects of space radiation on humans. In fact, the government’s program for conducting these experiments was halted in the 1990’s largely for this very reason.

Aysha Akhtar: NASA’s Wrong Stuff

February 16, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, USA