“Project Lightup”: Cruel Research on 6 Macaques. Research has been suspended!
On January 1, 2020 we posted regarding “Project Lightup”, a plan for cruel experimentation on six live macaques that a dedicated volunteer from Italy reached out to tell us about. The research was to involve surgically operating on the brains of the macaques in order to make them blind as a means to study treatment for a form of blindness in humans.
We have good news to report. The planned research has been suspended.
Our contact sent us a link to an Italian article providing an update:
She also provided the following translation of the article into English:
“Blind” macaques, the State Council suspends the experimentation.
It is a temporary decision to wait for TAR (Regional Arbitration Court) to pronounce about “Lightup” research project concerning visual deficits (“Lightup” is a research project of the Universities of Torino and Parma).
The State Council has changed the TAR decision of last December (last December TAR had rejected the request of LAV (Antivivisection League) to stop the experiment on the macaques) ordering the suspension of the experimentation on the macaques of the Universities of Torino and Parma as a precautionary measure.
The State Council has suspended the research project on the macaques because the General Direction Cabinet of the italian Ministry of Health would not have proved the impossibility of finding alternatives to an experimentation considered invasive on animals. “Those who experiment on animals – according to the judges – must prove that there are no alternatives”.
In the comparison of interests, the administrative judges stressed, the interest of LAV (who had appealed to the State Council against the sentence of TAR of last December) for the protection of the animals prevails. And the State Council condemned the Ministry of Health and the Universities of Torino and Parma to pay back 3,000 euros of legal fees to the association LAV.
LAV exults: “Finally with this pronouncement the State Council aims at clarifing beyond the rubber wall that defends an experimental project in which more and more missing requirements, inconsistencies and partisan evaluations emerge, and the State Council aims at confirming the importance of the interest in the protection of animals, worthy of protection ».
The case arrived to the European Commission:
The case of the experimentation on the macaques had also arrived to Bruxelles last October, after many public demonstrations and threats to the researchers involved. A Question for written answer regarding the authorizations for testing on non-human primates was presented to the European Commission by Fulvio Martusciello (Fi-European People’s Party), member of the Health and Consumer Commission of the European Parliament.
Our contact also provided us with a Canadian article about the update in French. You can find it at:
There’s also an online petition, available at:
https://www.change.org/p/roberto-speranza-salviamo-i-macachi-di-torino
Remember the power of public opinion!
