Brookhaven Lab halts planned monkey research

A proposed experiment that involves exposing tiny squirrel monkeys to blasts of potent radiation at a NASA-run facility on the campus of Brookhaven National Laboratory has been halted, according to space agency officials.

The experiment, designed by a Harvard-affiliated researcher, has been embroiled in a storm of controversy for more than a year. It has included a letter-writing campaign by schoolchildren eager to save the monkeys, and protests led by animal-rights activists who dressed in monkey suits and carried placards outside the lab.

Dr. Jack Bergman, a behavioral pharmacologist at McClean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., proposed exposing squirrel monkeys to high-energy radiation in a $1.75-million NASA-funded project. The object was to determine how effects on the animals' brains might suggest how people would fare during a deep-space voyage to Mars.

NASA operates the Space Radiation Laboratory, one of several major research facilities at Brookhaven. The NASA-run lab is the only center nationwide capable of producing the high-energy ions and protons that mimic the supercharged radiation environment pervading deep space.

"We were told we should remove [the experiment] from consideration . . . at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory," Peter Genzer, a spokesman for Brookhaven, said Tuesday.

Michael Braukus, a spokesman for NASA, said the space agency is re-evaluating a wide range of experiments. "The reality is the decision regarding the primate experiment is deferred until we conduct a comprehensive review of our current research and technology development plans."

Dr. John Pippin, whose animal rights organization, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, led vigorous protests against the experiment, said with austerity now a theme in government spending, he doubts the experiment will ever occur.

"The request for beam time has been withdrawn, that's the bottom line," said Pippin, referring to use of the radiation-emitting device at the space laboratory. He called the proposed experiment - in which dozens of 2-pound squirrel monkeys were to be hit with blasts of high energy - junk science.

Bergman theorized the monkeys could serve as proxies for humans. Pippin countered that exposing a tiny monkey to radiation in a lab cannot approximate the radiation exposure to 180-pound astronauts wearing spacesuits while flying in a Mars-bound craft. NASA, he said, should develop better shields to prevent astronauts from being bombarded by radiation.

But with the Mars program now scuttled, he said, exposing the monkeys at this juncture would have been especially cruel.