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pg. 2--With My Own Eyes: Activist Undercover "I witnessed technicians jabbing monkeys dozens of times, unable to find a vein for a blood sample. One of our veterinarians, Gwen Maginnis admitted, 'They're not thinking about the monkey in front of them, but the next 20 down the line,'" Rossell says. Rossell and USDA inspector Dr. Isis Johnson Brown tried to advocate reforms in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act, but soon realized that the feeble laws left them powerless to initiate change. In 2000, Rossell and Dr. Brown left ORPRC to blow the whistle at a press conference. Though ORPRC installed a few humane modifications, ABC's Good Morning America recently exposed the frivolous work of Judy L. Cameron, an ORPRC researcher who receives part of an annual $15 million in tax dollars to torment rhesus monkeys in studies to "shed light on abnormal behaviors in children." For one test, Cameron implants a bulky transmitter and heart monitor under the monkeys' backs to check heart rates while remote-control planes zoom over their heads. Today, Rossell works less secretively as Northwest Outreach Coordinator for In Defense of Animals, a national non-profit dedicated to animal protection. He is more likely to be spotted on Capitol Hill lobbying legislators than behind the scenes. Still, the chance to bear witness attracts Rossell with magnet-like intensity. "I don't know that I could do anything else," he says. "I've been inside. I have come to know the animals as individuals. And I have seen their abuse with my own eyes."
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