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Cruel Tests for Profit
The "Grease Pit"For one year, 32 monkeys were gavaged orally at Covance. The study was conducted for a major pharmaceutical company and was nicknamed "grease pit" by the staff because the test substance was thick and greasy. Every day for 365 days, the monkeys in the grease pit test had thick tubes shoved down their throats so the tarry substance could be delivered into their stomachs. Naturally the poor animals had to be torn out of their cages for this daily abuse and many tried as best they could to keep their mouths shut tight. But there was always the "bite bar" ...
From the investigator's log:
"I dosed grease pit today while J and T caught and R did the bite bar. A girl from the rodent department came in to watch some of the dosing. When one of the male monkeys, Ninja, would not open his mouth for dosing, R hit him in the face with the bite bar several times so hard it was audible, and she also used the bite bar to try and pry his mouth open. T told her, 'You're gonna kill him!' to which R responded, 'I'll ram it down his fucking throat.' As T caught the monkeys, he yelled at them, saying things like 'Dumb fuck,' 'Hold your fucking head up, dick,' and 'You little asshole.'"
On October 26, 2004, PETA's investigator was told by her coworker that over the weekend, J had aspirated a "grease-pit monkey" (put the dosing tube into the monkey's lung instead of his stomach) and that the technicians "held him upside-down and shook him" to see if they could get any of the slimy substance out of his lungs but "only bloody froth came out." It took the animal at least 45 minutes to die.
By January 20, 2005, the end of what was surely a long year of suffering for these poor animals was at hand. All of the grease pit monkeys were sedated and driven to another building in an unheated golf cart in freezing temperatures where they were bled to death in stainless steel sinks, their thighs cut open by the necropsy technicians and their body parts sorted.
Death or Nothing
On December 13, 2004, 10 cynomolgus monkeys were given the first dose of an unknown substance. The Covance technicians were told by the study director that the client expected deaths but our investigator was in disbelief over what happened during the following two hellish weeks. The monkeys were stuck inside large plastic restraint tubes and were dosed every day for 14 days by a 10-minute infusion into a leg vein. After having been infused with the substance, the monkeys were bled at five minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and one, two, four, six, eight, and 12 hours post-dose. Each time they were bled, the frightened and desperately sick animals were yanked from the cages and stuffed into the clear plastic body tubes. Within several hours of the first dose, monkey #23, in the high dose group, was ataxic—laboratory jargon for no motor coordination. The following day, both of the mid- and high-dose groups were ataxic, with monkey #22 hunched and inactive. By day 3, the technicians handling the dosing were told that the client does not want any veterinary requests entered. The technicians were allowed to enter the animals' suffering as "observations" into the computer system but they were not allowed to ask for veterinary care. Monkey #23 stopped using the leg into which the substance was infused and soon necrotic (dead) tissue surrounded the injection site. His leg was swollen all the way down to his foot. So they dosed him in his other leg which led to the same hideous suffering. The technicians were ordered to dose #23 and any other monkey whose legs became unusable, in his tail. This poor monkey's tail became necrotic. On December 17, monkey #22 went into convulsions while he was being dosed, and our investigator, against orders, informed the veterinarian—to no avail. They had to enter the convulsions into the computer system as an "observation." On December 21, 2004, according to our investigator's log notes, one of the female monkeys went into convulsions inside her restraint tube and another female began vomiting inside the tube where she was left for the entire 10-minute dosing and the five-minute blood draw. She was returned to her cage covered in vomit. Our investigator's coworker told her that K, the study director, did not come in at all over the weekend as he had promised to do, so our investigator went to speak with J, the toxicologist, to tell her the horrible condition of the monkeys. Nothing was done. The monkeys were killed two days after Christmas, except for #23, who was killed slightly earlier than the others because his legs were so necrotic.
In a conversation on January 3, 2005, the junior veterinarian at Covance told our investigator that the study director had asked her to look at the animals right before they were killed so that there would be a record of their having been looked at by a vet, but as for allowing technicians or veterinarians to ask for treatment during the 14 days, she said, "We weren't allowed to! All of those sheets that J [the toxicologist] sent—I was not allowed to look at those animals. It was either death or nothing."
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