Monkey business: Columbia U is under investigation for potential violation of animal welfare laws. Credit: Sion Touhig/Getty Images

Columbia University's medical center is under fire from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which has alleged that the school's treatment of research primates violates New York state laws.

PETA's complaints have prompted investigations by the US Department of Agriculture and the US National Institutes of Health into the university's potential violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. In March, PETA also filed a complaint against the medical center with the office of the Manhattan District Attorney.

PETA began an intense public awareness campaign in 2002 after veterinarian Catherine Dell'Orto, a former postdoctoral fellow at Columbia, went public with complaints about the treatment of baboons she had observed in several Columbia laboratories, particularly in the stroke therapy research of neurosurgeon E. Sander Connolly.

The study to test potential neuroprotective drugs in a baboon model of stroke involved removing an eye from each animal to allow technicians to clamp an artery and artificially induce a stroke. Dell'Orto reported that anesthesia was not administered to some baboon subjects, while others were left to die in their cages without being euthanized.

Laboratories are generally exempt from New York animal cruelty laws, but scientists may be prosecuted in cases where experiments are “improperly conducted,” says Mary Beth Sweetland, PETA senior vice president. PETA says Connolly and his staff failed to observe the research protocols and that the experiments “lacked any 'reasonable scientific justification'.”

Also named in the complaint were members of the medical center's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which evaluates animal research protocols. Mark Underwood, chairman of the committee, says an internal investigation turned up several “deficiencies,” including incomplete documentation and insufficient post-operative veterinary observation. “Columbia University took the allegations very seriously and made immediate and appropriate corrective action,” says Underwood, who was not named in the complaint.

Connolly, who did not respond to interview requests, has voluntarily suspended the stroke experiments, Underwood says, adding that Connolly and others who conduct animal research have the university's full support. “We feel that the research is of vital importance to the mission of saving lives and finding cures,” Underwood says.

PETA and others were buoyed by a recent critique of animal research, which reported that much of the research is inapplicable to human models and is subject to significantly lower standards than clinical trials (BMJ 328, 514–517; 2004). The authors concluded that “the contribution of animal studies to clinical medicine requires urgent formal investigation.”