No more monkey business
NASA bows to protests over plans to irradiate monkeys in space travel tests
By Michael Collins 12/23/2010
Monkey lovers were delighted Dec. 13 when they learned that NASA had pulled the plug on its controversial plan to irradiate 18 of the sociable primates to learn about the effects of radiation on human astronauts on long voyages to Mars.
The experiments, which included bombarding squirrel monkeys with withering doses of radiation to see what effect it had on them, were to take place at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, NY.
“NASA has informed Brookhaven that a proposal involving primate research at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory on the Brookhaven Lab site should be removed from consideration for experimental time at the facility,” read a press release that appeared on the lab’s Web site.
That somewhat cryptic message was made clearer by Peter Genzer, Brookhaven Lab’s manager of media and communications and production services office.
“All I can say is that BNL management asked NASA how this comprehensive review (announced Dec. 8) would impact that particular experiment, and NASA said we should remove it from consideration for experimental time at [the Space Radiation Laboratory],” Genzer told the Pasadena Weekly.
The proposed experiments were the subject of a Weekly cover story earlier this year, which garnered wide attention. The newspaper’s investigation found that the massive single dose that was to be administered to the monkeys did not mimic the kind of long-term bombardment of ionizing gamma radiation that astronauts would endure for the 130 to 260 days it would take to travel to and explore the Red Planet, making the $1.75 million experiments scientifically spurious.
Furthermore, the Weekly exposed the fact that NASA already had an experiment under way on the effects of long-term space radiation on astronauts derived from Italian tests on the International Space Station that started in summer 2009.
That experiment, called ALTEA, used humans in special helmets to “discriminate the type of particles, to measure their trajectories and the delivered energies. This will provide in-depth information on the radiation experienced and its impact on the nervous systems and visual perception. ALTEA will also develop new risk parameters and possible countermeasures aimed at the functional central nervous system risks,” according to NASA’s Web site.
This made NASA’s monkey business moot. Nevertheless, the space agency did not rescind the dubious simian experiments until after groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protested and organized a telephone, letter and email campaign that bombarded NASA with more than 100,000 messages condemning the radiation tests. High-profile celebrities joined the fight, including Bob Barker, Alicia Silverstone and Sir Paul McCartney.
“We’re pleased that NASA has seen the light and grounded its cruel and misguided plan to zap dozens of monkeys with radiation and lock them in labs for the rest of their lives,” PETA’s Justin Goodman told the Weekly. “The project would have cost animals dearly, squandered taxpayers’ money and told NASA nothing about how to protect human astronauts in space.”
Contact the author, Michael Collins, at EnviroReporter.com.
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