Chancellor Biddy Martin wrote a response Wednesday to the members of the Dane County Board of Supervisors, who have recently expressed concerns with the ethics of primate research at UW-Madison.
The Board's members sent a letter to Martin last week claiming the All-Campus Animal Care and Use Committee could not issue a fair ruling on whether the UW-Madison primate research is ethical.
Many members said they believe that the salaried A-CACUC members were acting in the UW's interest when making their decision that the UW-Madison primate research is ethical.
Martin said in her response that some members of the board are community members with no association to UW-Madison. She added that the committee members who are UW-Madison employees were ""selected on the basis of their expertise, experience and willingness to participate in the time-consuming and complex process of overseeing and evaluating our animal programs.""
Eric Sandgren, UW-Madison Research Animal Resource Center director, also said in a statement that primate research on campus has to meet certain ethics protocols before it can begin.
""UW-Madison Animal Care and Use Committee answer the question of whether experimenting on primates, or any animal, is ethical,"" he said in a statement. ""Just as for experiments involving humans, only if the answer is ‘yes' will an animal study be allowed to proceed.""
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued several violations in December regarding UW-Madison's animal facilities, including sanitation and ventilation concerns. In January, however, the USDA cleared UW-Madison of all these violations.
—Kelsey Gunderson
