Animals 'Suffering And Dying In Agony' In CDC's Labs: PETA

ATLANTA, GA — Hundreds of animals are dead. Hundreds more have been injured or neglected. At least one Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee has been fired.

Federal documents obtained by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals through the Freedom of Information Act and viewed by Patch reveal 30 serious violations of federal protocols and animal negligence at the CDC's facilities in Atlanta and Fort Collins, Colorado, between April 2018 and April 2021. PETA is now calling on the CDC's accrediting body — the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International — to revoke its accreditation of the CDC's laboratories, PETA's Special Projects Manager Magnolia Martinez wrote in a letter to AAALAC on Monday.

“Animals in the CDC’s laboratories are suffering and dying in agony — in experiments that the majority of Americans oppose, according to a Pew Research Center survey — because employees are apparently sloppy and incompetent,” said Alka Chandna, PETA's vice president of laboratory investigations cases. The most recent Pew Research Center survey, conducted in 2018, showed 52 percent of Americans oppose animal use in scientific research, while 47 percent were in favor of the practice.

Case files for the incidents of animal negligence can be viewed here. Among the list were the following:

• A female monkey had a vaginal ring implanted for nearly three years instead of the intended 14 days because staff members failed to find the ring and assumed the monkey had removed it herself. After almost three years, a mass was found in her body, where the ring was "partially encased in a mineral-like substance" inside her.
• A rabbit suffered a seizure after being sedated and was euthanized, and a guinea pig died after receiving an anesthetic. The animal technician involved in these incidents did not inform the veterinarian. It was determined that this person was responsible for the "inappropriate administration of anesthesia and monitoring of approximately 30 guinea pigs." The employee was fired.
• When placing a cage in an autoclave — a machine that uses steam under pressure to kill bacteria — a staff member failed to notice that a mouse was still inside. The animal was steamed to death.
• A total of 42 mice were left without oxygen and four of them died from hypoxia after staff members failed to connect their cages to an air supply.
• In two separate incidents, 177 "unexpected" mice were born because staff members failed to determine the sex of the parent animals before caging them together. A total of 68 mice had to be euthanized.
• An undetermined number of goats were subjected to plasma collection "as often as every 48 hours" instead of every 30 days, in violation of the approved protocol.
• Two rabbits that weighed less than 8 pounds each were subjected to a tick infestation. Staff members used three bags of ticks instead of two, in violation of the approved protocol. One of the rabbits had to be euthanized.
• Four mice were left without food, and one starved to death.

The National Institute of Health's Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare responded to each of the reported violations and acknowledged when CDC personnel completed corrective measures to rectify the violations. All letters between OLAW and the CDC can be viewed here.

"CDC takes its stewardship of the animals in its care extremely seriously. We continually strive to assure that the highest standards possible are followed to help ensure that animals are treated and cared for in a humane manner," a CDC spokesperson said in an email to Patch, which did not directly deny the allegations. "We have a responsibility to ensure that animals entrusted to us are treated in accordance with the highest standards of animal welfare and care. All research involving animals conducted and/or funded (in whole or in part) by CDC must comply with the applicable federal laws, rules, regulations and policies governing animal care and use."

AAALAC International did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Animal experimentation

Animal testing, or animal experimentation, has been used for decades in scientific and biomedical research. It was crucial to discovering the polio vaccine; finding treatments for cystic fibrosis; developing chemotherapy for fighting cancer; developing the organ transplant process; and many other scientific advances, according to the Foundation of Biomedical Research.

But it's still been a long contentious issue among Americans, politicians and animal rights activists, including PETA. Some critics say it's unethical and inhumane, and others argue that animal testing is costly and does not always translate, given the differences between humans and animals.

"Animal experiments, historically, they've given us some answers. There's no denying that," Chandna said. "But animals are sentient beings. They feel pain, they suffer, and we are caging them, depriving them of everything that would make their lives worth living and then inflicting pain and suffering on them, and then killing them without their consent. To experiment on sentient beings without their consent is problematic."

Chandna said other methods are being developed — and some are already being used — to replace animal testing, such as so-called organs-on-a-chip and computer simulations. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is also planning to end animal testing on mammals by 2035, Science Magazine reported.

"The goal is to get to personalized medicine, because what works for one person doesn't always work for another, simply based on age, sex, race, environmental upbringing, medical history, even just different body types," Chandna said. "You're never going to get to that from [animal testing]. But you will get it from these human-relevant approaches."

Why does the CDC's accreditation matter?

Maintaining AAALAC accreditation — considered as the "gold standard" for ethical scientific research — is an optional measure for most labs, but it's required for federal ones such as the CDC since those are not inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The CDC has held AAALAC accreditation since 1967. AAALAC said staff provided and maintained "an exemplary program of laboratory animal care and use," following the latest site visits to Atlanta in October 2018 and to Fort Collins in March 2021. The CDC spokesperson said "full accreditation shall continue."

However, it's not the first time the agency's accreditation has come into question.

In 2006, AAALAC put the CDC on probation because of serious problems with animal care from the year prior, including the deaths of two monkeys that were kept without water, the CDC said on its website. Some of the problems had persisted since 2002.

Eight years later, an employee whistleblower report — obtained by PETA through the Freedom of Information Act — revealed that two sick monkeys that were slated to be used in infectious disease experiments at the CDC were placed under intensely hot heat lamps and heating pads for hours.

The experiment was not properly monitored, federal documents showed, and the monkeys sustained third-degree burns on their arms and backs. The burns were "so severe that their skin had peeled off and muscle was sloughing off their bones," according to the report.

"If AAALAC is concerned about its reputation, if AAALAC really wants to say that it's the 'gold standard,' well it cannot continue to be that for the sorts of atrocities that are going on at the CDC," Chandna told Patch. "That level of negligence, incompetence, disregard and disrespect for federal animal welfare guidelines and regulations ... is this what you want to be associated with? Do you want your brand to be tarnished with this laundry list of problems?"

However, Chandna acknowledged that it's rare for AAALAC to remove an entity's accreditation. If that happened to the CDC, animal testing at all of its facilities would have to stop.

In the event that AAALAC does not revoke the CDC's accreditation, Chandna said PETA will still fight to bring awareness to what it found happening at the CDC.

"If AAALAC were to take this unprecedented step of actually revoking its accreditation from the CDC's laboratories, that would be catastrophic for the CDC," Chandna said, reflecting on PETA's goal to end animal experimentation. "It would mean that it could not experiment on animals, that it could not have animals in its laboratories ... it would be seismic. It would be enough."