Albany Judge rules in favor of disclosure of State documents related to animal research

In a decision issued this week, New York State's Office of Mental Health must turn over documents that detail taxpayer-funded experiments conducted on monkeys and other non-human primates for substance abuse research, ruled Judge Richard Platkin.

The state attempted to prevent the document's release under the Freedom of Information Act which was filed by Physicians for Responsible Medicine, stating that the scientists who performed the studies may be targeted by animal-rights terrorists if the details of their experiments were disclosed.

Justice Platkin was not convinced.

Many of the documents sought involved experiments involving inducing monkeys to have drug and alcohol addictions, and then testing whether various medications broke those addictions.

In its court filing the state argued that "the well-documented, increasingly frequent threats and acts of violence directed by militant animal rights extremists at research facilities and individual researchers who are engaged in research using animal subjects" was evidence that the information should not be made public.

Platkin's decision stated that "State government routinely engages in activities that some individuals might find objectionable or inflammatory, but OMH can point to no precedent for insulating the work of New York State government from public scrutiny on the basis that disclosure could upset or incite those who lack respect for the rule of the law."