NASA Says It will Begin Irradiating Primates.. Harvard Involved?

Harvard with its underground primate torture labs at Southborough and other
locations is apparently involved.


NASA to Start Irradiating Monkeys
Irene Klotz, Discovery News



Oct. 29, 2009 -- NASA is stepping up its space radiation studies with a round of experiments that for the first time in decades will use monkeys as subjects.

The point of the experiments is to understand how the harsh radioactive environment of space affects human bodies and behavior and what countermeasures can be developed to make long-duration spaceflight safe for travelers beyond Earth's protective magnetic shield.

For the new study, 18 to 28 squirrel monkeys will be exposed to a low dose of the type of radiation that astronauts traveling to Mars can expect to encounter.

Scientists are particularly interested in studying how the radiation impacts the monkeys' central nervous systems and behaviors over time.

"We realized there was a need for this kind of work," Jack Bergman, a behavioral pharmacologist at Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital in Boston, told Discovery News.

"There's a long-standing commitment on the part of NASA to deep space travel and with that commitment comes a need for knowing what kinds of adverse effects deep space travel might have, what are the risks to astronauts," Bergman said. "That's not been well assessed."