14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this week, the Harvard Medical School announced that they were to shut down their 50-year-old primate research center in Southborough, Massachusetts.
By the looks of it, their decision was taken primarily because of financial consideration, spokespersons for the New England Primate Research Center told members of the press.
More precisely, it appears that the Harvard Medical School is currently forced to work on a tight budget and can no longer afford to keep this center up and running.
While specialists working with other primate research centers were sad to hear about the closing of this primate laboratory, green-oriented groups such as the Humane Society of the United States and PETA welcomed the initiative.
Thus, Nature informs us that a spokesperson for the first of these two organizations made a case of how, “[It’s] “a significant, positive development. Our government should prioritize alternatives that will provide better, faster and more relevant results for human health.”
“PETA is celebrating Harvard's decision to shutter its massive primate prison after our decades-long campaign to achieve exactly that,” the latter organization wrote on its official website.
Harvard's New England Primate Research Center is known to currently serve as home for about 2,000 monkeys.
Both PETA and several other animal rights activists hope that the animals will be sent to various sanctuaries where they will be given the chance to recover from their ordeal.
However, rumor has it that that the people in charge of running the Harvard Medical School are actually looking into the possibility of either sending these monkeys to other research centers, or keeping them on site throughout a 12- to 24-month wind-down period.
PETA hopes that similar primate research centers in Oregon, Georgia, Wisconsin, Washington, Texas, California, and Louisiana will soon follow in this facility's footsteps and also shut down.
“We need your help to empty all of their cages. Please ask Congress to divert public money away from experiments on animals in favor of humane, relevant, and lifesaving non-animal research,” the organization urges.