Not to be confused with wild monkeys in Silver Springs, Florida.
The Silver Spring monkeys are 17 wild-born monkey macaques from the Philippines that are housed at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. From 1981 to 1991 they became what writers call the most famous laboratory animals in history, as a result of fighting between animal researchers, animal supporters, politicians, and courts whether to use them in research or release them to shelter. In the scientific community, monkeys became famous for their use in experiments into neuroplasticity - the adult primate brain's ability to rearrange itself.
The monkeys have been used as subjects of research by Edward Taub, a psychologist, who has cut off afferent ganglia that supply sensations to the brain from their arms, then using a sling arm to hold a good or unpaired arm to train them to use their limbs. can not feel. In May 1981, Alex Pacheco of the human rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) began working undercover in the laboratory, and informed the police of what PETA saw as an unacceptable living conditions for monkeys. In what was the first US police attack on an animal researcher, police entered the Institute and removed the monkeys, accusing Taub of 17 counts of animal cruelty and failing to provide adequate animal care. He was convicted of six charges; five were reversed during the second trial, and the last conviction was canceled in 1983, when the court ruled that the animal cruelty laws in Maryland do not apply to federally funded laboratories.
The ensuing battle over macaque prisoners saw celebrities and politicians campaigning for ape liberation, amendment in 1985 for the Animal Welfare Act, PETA transformation from a group of friends into a national movement, the creation of the first North American Animal Liberation Front cell, and the first animal research case to reach United States Supreme Court. In July 1991, PETA's petition to the Supreme Court for prisoners was rejected. A few days later, the last two monkeys were killed after the veterinarians decided they were suffering and had to be euthanized.
During subsequent surgery of the monkeys, it was found that significant cortical remapping had occurred, suggesting that being forced to use limbs without sensory input has triggered changes in the organization of their brains. This evidence of brain plasticity helps to overthrow the widely held view that the adult brain can not self-regulate in response to its environment. After five years of receiving death threats and unable to find research positions, Taub was offered a grant by the University of Alabama, where he developed a new form of therapy, based on the concept of neuroplasticity, for people with disabilities as a result of brain damage. Known as an induction-induced movement therapy, it has helped stroke survivors regain the use of crippled limbs for years, and has been praised by the American Stroke Association as being at the forefront of a revolution.
Video Silver Spring monkeys
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Edward Taub
Edward Taub (born 1931) is a behavioral neurologist who is currently based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He became interested in behaviorism while studying philosophy at Columbia University, and went on to study under Fred Keller and Wiliam N. Schoenfeld, an experimental psychologist. He took a job as a research assistant in a neurology laboratory to gain more understanding of the nervous system, and engaged in deafferentation experiments with monkeys.
An afferent nerve is a sensory nerve that impulses the skin and other sense organs to the spine and brain. Deafferentation is a surgical procedure in which the spinal cord is exposed and the sensory nerve cuts so that this impulse does not reach the brain. A monkey whose limbs have experienced indifference will not feel it, or even can feel where they are in outer space. In his trial in 1981, Taub told the court that the deaf-hard monkeys were extremely difficult to guard, because they considered their disobedient limbs to be foreign, mutilating them and trying to chew them. Taub continues to work with disgruntled monkeys at New York University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1970. Engaged in what he saw initially as pure research, he undertook several types of deafferentation experiments. He exerted the whole ape body, so they could not feel a part of themselves. He does not respect them at birth. He took monkey fetuses out of the womb, ignored them, then returned them to be born without taste from their own bodies.
When Taub began his research in a neurological laboratory, the general view was that monkeys would not be able to use limbs they could not feel. Norman Doidge writes that Taub wondered if the reason why the monkeys left behind the deaf limbs was because they were still able to use the good. He tested his idea by paralyzing a monkey's hand and holding a good arm with a sling. The monkey then uses his unferenced arm to feed and move by itself. He reasoned that, if a monkey refuses to use an impartial arm because it can rely on his good arm, the arms will force the monkey to use it, a paradoxical finding, but his experiment confirmed. He even deviates throughout the spinal cord, so the monkey does not receive sensory input from one of his limbs, but still uses it. Doidge writes that Taub has enlightenment, suspecting that the reason the monkeys would not use their deaf legs simply because they did not study, an idea he called "never learning."
Alex Pacheco
Alex Pacheco (born 1958) was a graduate student at George Washington University when he volunteered in May 1981 to work as a research assistant at Taub's laboratory. The Washington Post writes that he grew up in Mexico, the son of a doctor, and wants to become a pastor. He toured the slaughterhouse in the 1970s and said it changed his life; he read Peter Singer Animal Liberation (1975), stopped eating meat, and became an animal rights activist. He worked on a whaling ship, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, joined the Hunt Saboteurs Association in England, and when he returned to the United States to study political science at George Washington, he worked with Ingrid Newkirk, a local ponmaster, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in March 1980. The point of taking research positions at Taub's laboratory was to get a hands-on experience of what happened in the animal research lab, so he looked through the list of government-funded laboratories and selected the one nearest his home in Takoma Park. Taub offers him an unpaid position and makes him work with a disciple, Georgette Yakalis.
The monkeys
In the Institute for Behavioral Research, Taub conducted a deafferentasi trial on 16 male crab-eating apes (Macaca fascicularis), and one rhesus female ( Macaca mulatta ), each about 14 inches tall, all born wild in the Philippines. Each monkey lives alone in a 18 x 18 inch wire enclosure, without bedding, no food bowl, and no enrichment environment, the cage is kept in a 15 foot square windowless room. Pacheco wrote that 12 of the 17 monkeys had one or both arms that had no censorship, while according to the Laboratory Bulletin Primate had been deafferentasi, the other seven acting as control groups.
The researchers have named the Chester monkeys, Paul, Billy, Hard Times, Domitian, Nero, Titus, Big Boy, Augustus, Allen, Montaigne, Sisyphus, Charlie, Brooks, Hayden, Adidas, and Sarah. Sarah, the only woman, was the subject of control, which meant she had been left intact. He had been bought from a dealer, Litton Laboratories, when he was one day old, and has lived since then, for eight years, at the Institute. Paul is the oldest. He has one arm that is not being ignored. He has chewed all the fingers in that hand and pulled the skin and flesh from the palm of his hand, exposing the bones. Billy had surgery for both arms, and used his legs to pick up pellet food.
Maps Silver Spring monkeys
Police stormed and charged
Description of the lab pachec
Pacheco writes that he found monkeys that live in dirty conditions. He found a frozen monkey body in the fridge, and the other floated on formaldehyde. He guessed that, in the operating room, human and monkey records were scattered everywhere, including under the operating table, while dirty clothes, old shoes, rat droppings, and urine covered the floor, with cockroaches in the drawers, on the floor, and on around the sink scrub. He said that the wires from the enclosure were coated with dirt, with dirt piled up in the bottom of the cage, and urine and rust on every surface, with 17 monkeys picking the leftovers down through the wire floor from the cage into the trash below. He alleged that the cage had not been cleaned for months, there was no food to keep food away from the dirt, and that there was nothing for the monkey to sit on but the bottom of the wire cage. He writes that 12 monkeys have an inevitable limb, with their 39 fingers deformed or missing. He describes them as neurotic, attacking their deaf limbs, as if they were a foreign object:
No one cares to bind the monkey wounds properly (on some occasions when the bandage is used altogether), and antibiotics are administered only once; no lacerations or self-amputation wounds ever cleaned. Whenever a bandage is applied, it never changes, no matter how dirty or dirty it is. They were left until they deteriorated to the point where they fell from a wounded limb. Old, rotted bandages stuck to the floor of the cage where they collected urine and dirt. Monkeys also suffered various injuries caused by themselves or inflicted by monkeys that captured them from adjacent cages. I saw muscle tissue affected by stains on their arms. Two monkeys have bones protruding through their flesh. Some have bitten their own fingers and festered stubbles, which extend towards me as I quietly take the fruit out of my pocket. With these sad limbs, they searched for the dirty mess of their waste pot for something to eat.
Informal inspection and raid
Pacheco decided to document the conditions in the lab. He tells Taub that he wants to work at night, and takes a photo showing the living conditions of a monkey. He showed them in July to animal rights activists, including Cleveland Amory, who gave him money for better cameras and some walkie-talkies, so people looking outside could warn him if the visitor suddenly arrived. He also asked Peter Hamilton of the Vancouver-based Lifeforce Foundation to assist with the investigation. In August, Pacheco began inviting veterinarians and scientists to the lab to witness his condition. According to The Washington Post , Geza Teleki, a primate expert at George Washington University, writes that he has never seen a lab not treated properly, and psychologist Donald Barnes, a former primate researcher, writes that it is " A sad and unhealthy environment for primates "and a health hazard to humans. A local veterinarian, Richard Weitzman, agreed that the laboratory was very dirty, but said the monkeys appeared to be well fed and "in good health".
Pacheco reported the situation to the Montgomery County police, who raided the laboratory on September 11, 1981 under the Maryland Cattle Breeding Prevention Act. PETA gave instructions to the previous media, so the attack was witnessed by some journalists and camera crew, to police irritation. The officers then testified that the monkeys live in dirty conditions. Richard Swain, who led the raids, told The Washington Post in 1991: "It's really dirty, very dirty, unlike I've ever been in. I've executed a lot of searches I've worked in murder, in narcotics, as a character, but this is the first time I have entered a room and I feel sorry for my health just being there. "Taub was charged with 17 allegations of animal cruelty and failed to provide adequate animal care.
The police moved the monkeys from the lab to the basement of a house in Rockville owned by Lori Kenealy from a local human society. Peter Carlson wrote in The Washington Post that they were given toys, prepared with toothbrush by activists, watched 24 hours a day, and were allowed to watch daytime soap operas. Meanwhile, Taub's lawyers went to court and demanded them back, and ten days after the raid, a judge granted the request. And all of a sudden, Carlson wrote, the monkeys disappeared. Kenealy was not home when it happened, and insisted that she did not know anything about it. Richard Swain, who led police raids, arrested him and put him in a local prison overnight. PETA was informed that there was no legal action against Taub without monkeys as evidence. Carlson wrote that, just as suddenly as they disappeared, they were returned five days later, this time with Spanish moss in their stable after a vacation in Florida, according to activists. After another brief swipe, the monkeys were returned to Taub.
Taub response
Taub says he's set up. He said his lab was clean when he went on vacation, but Pacheco failed to clean the cage, ignored the animals, then subjected the lab to a false report of cruelty. During Taub's holiday in August, which lasted two weeks, on seven different days where animals should be fed and the enclosure area cleared, the two caregivers did not appear to work. Taub estimates the possibility of seven absences in the 2.5 week period at seven in a trillion based on the previous 14 months of attendance records from workers. On the three days of absence, Pacheco invites people to see the monkeys. Taub's research assistant, John Kunz, a graduate student, said that the carers took advantage of Taub's absence for a holiday on his own.
During the hearing in October and November 1981 from Taub and Kunz, Taub told the court - as reported by The Baltimore Sun - that monkeys have been treated "gently", and have what he calls "health records outstanding." He admitted that they had never been seen by a vet in the previous two years, because he was an expert in the treatment of disgruntled monkeys. Responding to monkey images with open wounds and rotting bandages, he said that using ointments, ointments, and bandages is more dangerous than leaving untreated conditions; monkeys do not feel the pain of deaf limbs and learn to ignore it, he says, while drawing attention to wounds with ointments or bandages will cause animals to bite or scratch them. Bandages may be needed where the wound grows out of control, or where there is a major infection, and sometimes it's better to let the bandage get worse, he says. Taub also testified that some of the pictures Pacheco had taken were staged for dramatic effects. Norman Doidge wrote in 2007 that, according to Taub, the monkeys in the photographs were placed in positions that were not part of the laboratory procedure, a claim Pacheco denied. For his droppings, Taub says "the monkey's room is a dirty place," and it is normal in the lab for dirt lying on the floor and food to fall to the bottom of the cage into a trash can. He said his employees had been using brooms and mops on the floor, and had emptied the trash tray almost daily. He said that the apes had been given fresh fruit twice a week, and that he disagreed with the vet who testified to the prosecution that the female monkey, Sarah, was emaciated.
Investigation National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which finances Taub's research, froze his $ 115,000 research fund. It initiates its own investigation, and sends the Office of Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) to assess Taub's laboratory. The OPRR found that laboratory animal care failed in a significant way, and concluded that it was not very clean. Based on the OPRR investigation, NIH suspended the remaining funds for the trial, more than $ 200,000, for breach of its animal care guidelines. William Raub and Joe Held, officials at NIH, wrote in the April Newsletter of Neuroscience in April 1983 that deaf-affiliated monkeys remained in NIH since May 1981, and underwent the same surgical procedure, did not develop lesions that comparable to those in five of the deaf monkeys from the Taub lab. "Based on these observations," they wrote, "it would appear that fractures, dislocations, lacerations, punctures, contusions, and abrasions with accompanying infections, acute and chronic inflammation, and necrosis are not the inevitable consequences of deafferentiation." After the appeal, according to Doidge wrote in 2007, 67 professional societies made representations on behalf of Taub, and NIH reversed its decision not to fund its research. In 1991 neurologist David Hubel, referring to the Silver Spring monkey case and a PETA film about the head injury clinic of the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, said that science is healthy, that the people involved are not cruel, and that at the time there "Standard flaws" in animal care are, he wrote, almost unimaginable today.
Exam and appeal
First experiment (October 1981)
According to Peter Carlson, every aspect of the case was debated by experts on both sides during the first trial in October 1981. Prosecutors said that Taub's lab was dirty and unhealthy, and federal inspection reports and witnesses supported the allegations. Taub said the laboratory was no more dirty than others, and he also produced federal inspection reports and witnesses to support his position. Veterinarians who speak for the prosecution say Taub's failure to bandage monkey wounds is a threat to their health; veterinarians for defense, including two who once worked with monkeys whose limbs are irregular, saying bandaging them would cause the animals to attack the limbs. Carlson wrote that the prosecution resulted in 70 images of dirty conditions and wounded monkeys, while researchers who had worked in the lab testified that they had never seen such labs. District Court Judges Stanley Klavan - found Taub guilty of six counts of animal cruelty for failing to provide adequate animal care with respect to six monkeys, and released him from 11 other charges against him. He fined Taub $ 3,000. The laboratory assistant, John Kunz, was released from all 17 counts.
Second trial and appeal (1982 and 1983)
Taub succeeded in securing the second hearing in June 1982. After three weeks at the Montgomery County Circuit Court, a jury freed him of five penalties, and upheld the six allegations of inadequate Nero animal care, whose injuries were such that the NIH veterinarian then amputated his uninterrupted arm. Taub was fined $ 500. The sixth allegations were set aside on appeal, when the court ruled that the Law of Crime Prevention in Animals in Maryland does not apply to federally funded laboratories.
Fight for custody
After the monkeys were returned to Taub prison, they were transferred to the NIH facility. They were then transferred to the Tulane Regional Primate Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, still under NIH care and control. Two primate shelters, Moorpark College in California and Primer Primates in Texas, offer them a permanent home, but the NIH refuses to release them.
They were transferred by NIH to the Delta Primate Center in June 1986, where animal rights activists, who had been able to visit and care for animals in the center before, were told they could no longer see them. In 1987, 14 guards from the remaining monkeys recommended that eight of them be euthanized, as they were judged to be beyond the expectations of resocialization. The lawsuit was filed by PETA and the others tried to block euthanasia and transfer the animals to the facility under their control. The New England Anti-Vivisection Society and PETA posted an advertisement on The New York Times on December 26, 1989, The Washington Post on December 27, and at The Washington Times on January 3, 1990, called on President Bush to rescue monkeys, and concerned citizens to petition to the White House. After the court rejected custody of PETA, two of the monkeys, Titus and Allen, were kept for the National Institutes of Health at a primate center of Tulane University, where they were then euthanized.
Final experiments and euthanasia
The NIH had said in 1987 that no further invasive research would be conducted on monkeys, but in fact further trials were conducted on them in 1990. NIH presented an experiment in a lawsuit for animal custody in 1989. He proposed to perform surgical anesthesia during all procedures followed by euthanasia. After euthanasia, the network examination will continue. The court allowed a group of researchers from NIH to conduct a terminal experiment on January 14, 1990 on one of the monkeys who became ill. Under the anesthesia, the electrodes were placed in his brain and hundreds of tapes were taken. The Laboratory Primate Newsletter says it reveals an unprecedented level of reorganization of the sensory cortex - an area of ​​8-10 millimeters that would normally receive input from the found hand has been completely filled with input from the face. "Brainmapping research was performed on the remaining monkeys on July 6, 1990, three days after the PETA application for prisoners was rejected. The monkeys were then euthanized. During this experiment, scientists discovered an unexpected change in the structure of the thalamus that appears to be caused by progressive nerve degeneration through dorsal root ganglia (the disconnected) and dorsal columns along the path to the thalamus (second synaptic target).
Movement therapy triggered by constraint
Partly based on his work with Silver Spring monkeys, Taub went on to develop new physical therapy techniques to help stroke victims, and those with other forms of brain injury, regaining the use of affected limbs. The American Stroke Association considers Taub therapy, known as constraint-induced movement therapy (CI) therapy, as "at the forefront of a revolution" in the treatment of stroke victims. With CI therapy, patients are forced to use affected limbs, to the bare minimum of whatever they can, by leaving unaffected ones under control. Affected limbs are then used intensively for three to six hours each day for at least two weeks. As a result of engaging in repetitive movements with affected limbs, the brain grows new neural pathways that control the use of limbs, as a result of victims of seriously disabled strokes over the years have been reported back using almost entirely paralyzed limbs.
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