Is experimenting on monkeys ethical?
Thatâ??s the question Rick Marolt has spent the past four years trying to get someone — anyone — on the UW-Madison campus to answer. Not affiliated with the many groups that oppose animal research, the 48-year-old consultant and part-time business lecturer at Edgewood College and UW-Madison has made it a personal mission to push the university for more public self-examination on this hot-button topic.
Itâ??s a big deal for the university, which houses some 1,900 monkeys, most of them at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center. Experiments on everything from AIDS to stem cells using those monkeys brought in more than $46 million in research grants in 2008-2009.