In August 2006, The Burnham Institute for Medical Research announced that it will open a new research facility in Orlando. (Construction will begin in 2007.)

Burnham, like its neighbor The Scripps Research Institute, is a private corporation involved in research into a wide variety of diseases—from cancer to Alzheimer’s to arthritis. (Burnham and Scripps’ headquarters are located across the street from each other in La Jolla, California.) And like Scripps, Burnham was welcomed in Florida with unprecedented public subsidies—$155 million from the state, and another $70+ million from the City of Orlando/Orange County.

Burnham uses hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rats and mice in experiments every year. Unfortunately, mice and rats are not provided even minimal protection under federal regulations (Burnham does not report its use of mice and rats to the USDA). Burnham does not use animals other than rats and mice at their facility in La Jolla.

Stem Cell Research. The Burnham Institute for Medical Research is a leader in the emerging field of stem cell research. Stem cells have the special ability to develop into many different types of cells in the human body. Scientists are excited about the potential of human stem cells to serve as replacements for damaged or diseased cells. For example, healthy nerve cells could be developed in a laboratory and then transplanted into a patient with Parkinson’s or spinal cord injury. Scientists believe that stem cell research could lead to treatments or cures for a broad range of illnesses and injuries.

Promise. Many believe that stem cells may some day replace animals in research into many diseases, potentially saving millions of animals each year from cruel experiments. Stem cell cultures could generate an endless supply of healthy human cells for studying disease and testing new drugs.

Pain. Unfortunately, most stem cell research currently uses animals. The research of several scientists at Burnham involves transplanting human cells into “animal models” of injury and disease.

Brain damage. The head of Burnham’s stem cell program is Evan Snyder. Dr. Snyder, in a 2002 study (at the time, he was with the Harvard Medical School), used stem cells to study brain injury in mice. (This study was partially funded by the March of Dimes.) How do you damage a mouse brain? In his experiment, blood flow to the brains of week-old mice was obstructed and the baby mice were placed in a low oxygen chamber for two hours. Seven days after the “injury,” stem cells were implanted into the brains of the mice. The mice were later killed and their brains examined to see if the new cells repaired any of the damage. Dozens of mice died in this experiment. Of course, stem cell research using animals is hampered by the problems with all animal research— because of biological differences between species, animal research yields results that cannot be safely applied to humans. For example, in considering this experiment, the brains of mice and humans are different in important ways (structure/organization, size, number of neurons).

Spinal cord injury. The possibility that stem cells could be used to treat humans with spinal cord injury has attracted a lot of media attention. Scientists have injected stem cells into spinal cord-injured rats and mice. In some of the animals, the cells regenerated damaged cells and the animal was able to walk again.

In 2002, Burnham’s Evan Snyder produced a video showing how stem cells “cured” rats with spinal cord injuries.
Click here to view excerpts from the video.

The video is even more disturbing if you consider that Snyder paralyzed fifty rats in this experiment (one animal died from an overdose of a sedative; the other 49 were killed at the end of the experiment). It is unclear if treatments for the artificial, unnatural injuries created in rats would be relevant to human spinal cord injury.