blank

List of information sources and quotes on Silver Spring Monkeys 13 pages updated

Silver Spring Monkey case broke before fax machines existed, and before the internet existed:

Partial lists of landmarks: With over 100 million animals dieing in laboratories every year....

First time cruelty to animals was used as a reason for police to raid an animal laboratory

(covered by all major TV networks, front page of Washington Post, etc.)

First time cruelty to animals was used to confiscate animals from a laboratory.

First time cruelty to animals was used as the reason to arrest an animal experimenter.

First trial and criminal conviction of an animal experimenter because of cruelty to animals.

(multiple highly publicized criminal & civil trials)

First time cruelty to animals was used as the reason to terminate a federal research grant

(the grant was in it's 20th year).

First time cruelty to animals was used as the reason to shut down an entire laboratory,

separate from the termination of the federal grant.

First time federal legislation was ever introduced in Congress calling for the federal government

to release a group of mutilated laboratory animals.

First "abuse of laboratory animals" case before the U.S. Supreme Court -- not once, but two times.

Were the center piece of Congressional hearings on the abuse of laboratory animals,

Congress passed legislation amending federal law for laboratory animals.

Many animal rights groups came into existence immediately after this case; more than ever before.

220 Members of Congress and 55 U.S. Senators acted on this case, covering the entire political spectrum:

politicians from the far left such as Senator Ted Kennedy, to the far right, such as Senator Jesse Helms,

took public positions calling for the federal government to release a group of crippled laboratory animals.

WSJ front page: White House states that the top 3 problems the White House is hearing about from the

American public: 1) the war. 2) unemployment. 3) the Silver Spring Monkeys.

Gave birth to and launched the world's largest animal rights group, PETA, described by the New York Times as

the "mover and shaker" of the animal protection movement.

The 15 year struggle to free the Silver Spring Monkeys brought animal protection groups together, like never before.

Also brought our enemies together, like never before.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book:

"Monkey Business: The Disturbing Case That Launched the Animal Rights Movement"

(Hardcover; Amazon.com) Monkey Business By Kathy Snow Guillermo, Oliver Stone (Foreword by).

Working undercover at a research laboratory in 1981, Alex Pacheco's discoveries led to the first criminal

prosecution for animal cruelty against a medical researcher."

Oliver Stone: "Out of the sad saga of the Silver Spring Monkeys, grew one of the most important

social movements of our time"

World famous U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in has last 60 days on the Supreme Court,

delivered a ruling in favor of the Silver Spring Monkey's on May 20, 1991.The case began in the old days,

before the internet existed, before fax machines existed.

Rock singing legend Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane wrote a song dedicated to The Silver Spring Monkeys,

and performed it live at a black tie event in Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Example of Silver Spring Monkey experiments: Taub: "Behavioral Development after Forelimb Deafferentation

(crippling an arm by cutting the nerves) on Day of Birth in Monkeys with and without Blinding"

(blinding the monkeys), Science, Vol. 181. no. 4103, September 7, 1973, pp. 959-960.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: The Washington Post | Date: February 24, 1991|

Author: Peter Carlson | THE GREAT SILVER SPRING MONKEY DEBATE

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 1981, in an unprecedented raid on a scientific laboratory, Montgomery County police

seized 17 monkeys being used for neurological research. Nearly a decade later, the battle over animal rights rages on

- and the surviving monkeys are caught in the crossfire.

THE FIRST THING THAT HIT THEM WAS THE SMELL.

As soon as the Montgomery County police stepped through the door of the Institute for

Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, they caught a whiff of an unmistakable amm...

Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Wikipedia:

Alexander Fernando Pacheco (born August 1958) is an American animal rights activist.

He is co-founder and former chairman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),

founder of All American Animals,[1] a member of the advisory board of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,[2]

and the creator of 1-800-Save-a-Pet.com.[3]

Pacheco first came to public attention in 1981 for his role in what became known

as the Silver Spring monkeys case, a campaign to save 17 crab-eating macaques who

were undergoing experiments in the Institute for Biological Research in Silver Spring,

Maryland. Oliver Stone writes that the political campaign to save the monkeys and

highlight their treatment gave birth to the animal rights movement in the United States.

The campaign began when Pacheco took a job as a volunteer at the Institute to learn more

about animal research as part of his animal rights activism. Edward Taub, a psychologist, was

engaged there in research that involved removing the sensory input from monkeys' limbs, then

withholding food and subjecting them to electric shocks to force the animals to use the limbs they

could not feel.[4][5] Largely because of the conditions in which the monkeys were kept, Pacheco

reported Taub for violations of animal cruelty laws. Police raided the lab and seized the monkeys.

Taub was charged with 119 counts of animal cruelty, the first such charges to be brought in the

U.S. against a research scientist. He was convicted on 6 counts, but the convictions were later

overturned on appeal, one of them as the result of a jurisdictional technicality.[6]

The resulting legal battle for custody of the monkeys reached the United States Supreme Court,

the first animal-rights case to do so,[7] generating a large amount of publicity for PETA, and

transforming it from what Ingrid Newkirk called "five people in a basement" into a national movement.[8]

As a result of the case, the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Science, Research and

Technology held hearings which led to the 1985 Animal Welfare Act,[9] and in 1986, changes in United States

Public Health Service guidelines for animals used in animal research included a requirement

that each institution seeking federal funding have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee

whose job it is to oversee how laboratory animals within that institution are cared for.[6]

----------------------

From Wikipedia: Timeline

Mar 1980: Alex Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk set up PETA.

May 1981: Edward Taub offers Pacheco a volunteer research position at the Institute

for Behavioral Research (IBR).

Sep 1981: Montgomery County police raid Taub's laboratory and seize the monkeys.

Oct 1981: The monkeys are returned to IBR for Taub's trial. One of them, Charlie, dies after a fight

with another monkey. The remaining 16 are moved to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

animal center in Poolesville, Maryland.

Nov 1981: Taub is convicted on six counts of animal cruelty. Representative Tom Lantos and 20

members of Congress ask NIH not to return the monkeys to him.

Dec 1981: PETA files suit against the Institute for Behavioral Research, asking to be made

the monkeys' guardians.

Feb 1982: One of the monkeys, Hard Times, becomes paralyzed from the neck down and is euthanized.

Jul 1982: At Taub's appeal, all but one of the convictions is overturned.

Aug 1983: The Maryland Court of Appeals overturns Taub's remaining conviction, ruling

that federally funded research is not subject to state law.

Apr 1985: PETA's application for guardianship is dismissed by the U.S. District Court. PETA appeals.

May 1986: PETA's appeal is heard by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals; 256 members of Congress

and 58 Senators ask NIH to release the remaining 15 monkeys to a sanctuary.

Jun 1986: Representative Robert Smith and 229 other members of Congress call for the monkeys' release

to Primarily Primates, an animal sanctuary.[24] The NIH moves the monkeys to Delta Regional

Primate Research Center in Covington, Louisiana.

Sep 1986: The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses PETA's application for custody.

Nov 1986: One of the monkeys, Brooks, is found dead in his cage.

Mar 1987: PETA receives a leaked document showing that the American Psychological Society plans

to buy the monkeys and complete Taub's research.

Apr 1987: The Supreme Court rules that PETA has no legal standing.[24]

May 1987: The Delta Regional Primate Center recommends euthanasia for eight of the 14 surviving monkeys

because of "progressive and continuous deterioration."[24]

May 1987: William Raub, deputy director of the NIH, which still own the monkeys, says that he "reaffirms"

that the monkeys will be "excepted from further invasive research procedures and be

resocialized to the extent possible."[24]

Jul 1987: Representative Robert Smith introduces a bill mandating the release of the monkeys.

Senator Steve Symms introduces the same bill in the Senate.

Sep 1987: Five of the monkeys are transferred to the San Diego Zoo.

Jul 1988: The NIH recommends further research on the monkeys, then euthanasia.

Dec 1988: The NIH announces it will conduct research on three of the monkeys.

PETA obtains a restraining order.

Jan 1989: PETA files an application for custody against NIH and Tulane University,

which oversees the Delta primate center.

Aug 1989: Another monkey, Paul, dies.

Jan 1990: Billy undergoes a four-hour experiment, then is euthanized.

Mar 1990: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses PETA's application for custody.

Jul 1990: Research is conducted on Domitian (pictured above), Big Boy, and Augustus,

then they are euthanized.

Mar 1991: The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in the case.

Apr 1991: Research is conducted on Titus and Allen, then they are euthanized.[34]

May 1991: The Supreme Court rules in PETA's favor. The case is remanded to State Court for trial.

-----------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Monkey Business: The Disturbing Case That Launched The Animal Rights Movement

AUTHOR: Kathy Snow Guillermo PUBLISHER: National Press, 1993

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Monkey Business is the shocking story of the animal abuse case that brought the world of

government-sponsored animal experimentation to its knees and made "animal rights"

a part of the American vocabulary.

A true drama of espionage, secret late-night photo sessions, Monkey Business is the first

full account of the events surrounding the dawn of the animal rights movement in the United States.

The author tells the extraordinary story of how Alex Pacheco worked undercover,

exposing repeated abuses in laboratory experiments, and how the organization he co-founded,

People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA), rose from obscurity to become

an effective political force with more than two million members.

In May, 1981, Alex Pacheco, a college student, applied for a position as a volunteer at the

Institute for Behavioral Research (IBR) in Silver Spring, Maryland. He informed Dr. Edward Taub,

the animal experimenter, that he hoped to gain experience for a career in science. His true objective

however, was to observe firsthand the workings of IBR-one of many animal experimentation

laboratories in the country funded by federal tax dollars but rarely, if ever, seen by the public.

What he observed that summer changed him - and the world of animal experimentation-forever.

Monkey Business tells the story of cruelty unfathomable to civilized people. Seventeen primates

were crowded into wire cages less than 18 inches wide, in an unventilated room with poor sanitation

and conditions and pitifully scarce veterinary care.

Pacheco was ordered to starve and otherwise torment the animals into using limbs from which

the nerves had been severed - a process done on research for the treatment of stroke victims.

But the outraged Pacheco had other plans.

Along with his partner and girlfriend, PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, Pacheco brought leading

doctors, researchers and veterinarians into the lab at night, gathering witnesses to the horrors

that he faced there during the day.

Their discoveries led to the first criminal prosecution of a researcher for animal cruelty - a case

that wound its way to the Supreme Court, and established People For The Ethical Treatment Of

Animals as America's premier animal rights organization.

------------------------------------------------------------------

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Silver Spring monkeys

Domitian, (photo above) one of the Silver Spring monkeys, in a restraint chair. Images of the monkeys

became iconic after PETA distributed them widely in the media with the caption, "This is vivisection.

Don't let anyone tell you different."[1] Nobel Laureate David Hubel wrote "...there is strong suspicion

the Silver Spring monkey photograph was staged by animal-rights caretakers."[2]

The Silver Spring monkeys were seventeen macaque monkeys living inside the Institute of Behavioral

Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, who became what one writer called "the most famous lab

animals in history."[3] They came to public attention as a result of a bitter ten-year battle between

scientists, animal advocates, politicians, and the courts over whether to use in the animals in

research or release them to a sanctuary.

Within the scientific community, the monkeys are known for their role in research that led to the

discovery of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to remap itself, regarded as one of the most

exciting discoveries of the 20th century.[4]

The monkeys had been used as research subjects by Edward Taub, a psychologist, who had cut

afferent ganglia that supplied sensation to the brain from their arms and legs, then used restraint,

electric shock, and withholding of food to force them to use the limbs they could not feel.[5]

In the summer of 1981, Alex Pacheco of the animal-rights group PETA, founded a year earlier,

began working undercover in the lab, and he alerted police to what was widely deemed to be the

monkeys' unacceptable living conditions.[6] Police raided the Institute and removed the monkeys,

during the first such raid in the U.S. against an animal researcher.

Taub was charged with 119 counts of animal cruelty, and convicted on six counts, sending a chill

through the animal research community, though the convictions were overturned on appeal.[7]

The National Institutes of Health judged that the laboratory was "grossly unsanitary," and

suspended his funding.

The ensuing battle over the monkeys' custody saw celebrities and politicians campaign for the

monkeys' release, the introduction of the 1985 Animal Welfare Act, the transformation of PETA

from a group of friends into a national movement, the creation of the first North American

Animal Liberation Front cell,[8] and the first animal research case to reach the Supreme Court.[9]

In July 1990, days after the Supreme Court rejected PETA's application for custody, dissection

of the animals showed significant cortical remapping, suggesting that being forced to use limbs

with no sensory input had triggered changes in their brains' organization.[10] This evidence of the

brain's plasticity helped overturn the accepted view that the adult primate brain is hard-wired and

cannot reorganize itself in response to its environment.[11]

After five years of being stalked, receiving death threats, and being unable to find a research

position, Taub was offered a grant by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he

developed a new form of therapy, based on the concept of neuroplasticity, for people disabled

as a result of brain damage. Known as constraint-induced movement therapy, it has helped stroke

survivors regain the use of limbs paralysed for many years, and has been hailed by the

American Stroke Association as "at the forefront of a revolution."[12]

Pacheco's description of the laboratory

Alex Pacheco was a graduate student at George Washington University when he volunteered

in May 1981 to work as a research assistant in the Institute of Behavioral Research. He had

already formed the fledgling animal rights group PETA with Ingrid Newkirk in March 1980,

but at the time it amounted to what Newkirk called "five people in a basement."[19] The point

of taking the research position was to gain firsthand experience of what happens in laboratories,

so he looked through a list of government-funded laboratories and chose the one nearest to

his home in Takoma Park, which happened to be Taub's.[14] Taub offered him a position

and put him to work with a student, Georgette Yakalis.[6]

Living conditions

Pacheco writes that he found the monkeys living in very poor conditions:

"The smell was incredible ... I saw filth caked on the wires of the cages, faeces piled in the bottom

of the cages, urine and rust encrusting every surface. There, amid this rotting stench, sat sixteen

crab-eating macaques and one rhesus monkey, their lives limited to metal boxes just 17¾ inches

wide. In their desperation to assuage their hunger, they were picking forlornly at scraps and fragments

of broken biscuits that had fallen through the wire into the sodden accumulations in the waste

collection trays below.

The cages had clearly not been cleaned properly for months. There were no dishes to keep the

food away from the faeces, nothing for the animals to sit on but the jagged wires of the old cages,

nothing for them to see but the filthy, faeces-splattered walls of that windowless room,

only 15ft square.[6]

”

He writes that, in the surgery room, human and monkey records were scattered everywhere,

including under the operating table, while soiled clothes, old shoes, rat droppings, and urine

covered the floor, with cockroaches in the drawers, on the floor, and around the scrub sink.[6]

Condition of the monkeys

Pacheco writes that, when he first saw them, twelve of the monkeys had deafferented limbs,

with 39 of their fingers deformed or missing.[6] He describes them as neurotic, attacking their

deafferented limbs as though they were foreign objects:

“No one bothered to bandage the monkeys' injuries properly (on the few occasions when

bandages were used at all), and antibiotics were administered only once; no lacerations

or self-amputation injuries were ever cleaned. Whenever a bandage was applied, it was never

changed, no matter how filthy or soiled it became. They were left on until they deteriorated

to the point where they fell off the injured limb.

Old, rotted fragments of bandage were stuck to the cage floors where they collected urine

and faeces. The monkeys also suffered from a variety of wounds that were self-inflicted or

inflicted by monkeys grabbing at them from adjoining cages. I saw discoloured, exposed

muscle tissue on their arms.

Two monkeys had bones protruding through their flesh. Several had bitten off their own

fingers and had festering stubs, which they extended towards me as I discreetly took fruit

from my pockets. With these pitiful limbs they searched through the foul mess of their

waste pans for something to eat.[6]

”

Pacheco testified at Taub's trial that five of the deafferented monkeys had mutilated

themselves, and that open sores ran the length of their arms.

Taub responded that the monkeys were otherwise healthy, that deafferented monkeys

are notoriously hard to look after, that no one had seen the monkeys in that condition

other than Pacheco, that at least two of the photographs Pacheco took were staged, in

his view, and that the presence of faeces and other dirt was normal.[13] The scientific

community appeared split over whether to defend Taub's version of events.

Several contributed financially to his legal costs, but Drs. William Raub and Joe Held,

officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had financed Taub's research,

wrote in the Neuroscience Newsletter in April 1983 that deafferented monkeys "subjected

to the same surgical procedure and maintained at [NIH] since May, 1981 have not

developed lesions comparable to those in five of the nine deafferented monkeys from

IBR ... Based on these observations it would appear that fractures, dislocations,

lacerations, punctures, contusions, and abrasions with accompanying infection,

acute and chronic inflammation, and necrosis are not the inevitable consequences

of deafferentation."[20]

Gathering evidence

Pacheco visited the institute at night and took photographs that showed the monkeys'

living conditions.[21] Taub blamed those conditions on Pacheco who, he said, had

failed to clean the cages.

Pacheco arranged for scientists and veterinarians to visit the laboratory secretly, and

finally he reported the situation to the state police, who raided the laboratory under

Maryland's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law. Taub was convicted of six counts

of animal cruelty, later set aside by an appellate court.[21]

Taub responded to the allegations by saying he had been set up by PETA, and that his

laboratory had been clean when he left on vacation, but Pacheco had failed to clean the

cages, had neglected the animals, and had then subjected the laboratory to false reports

of cruelty. During Taub's 2.5 week vacation that August, on seven different days in which

the animals were supposed to have been fed and the cage area cleaned, no one showed up

to attend to the animals. Taub estimated the probability of seven absences in that 2.5 week

period at seven in a trillion based on the prior 14 months of attendance records from the

workers. On three of those absentee days, Pacheco brought people in to look at the monkeys. [22]

The National Institutes of Health initiated its own investigation, and sent the

Office for the Protection from Research Risks to assess the labs at IBR. OPRR

found that the lab animal care "failed in significant ways" and concluded that the

laboratory was "grossly unsanitary."[22] Based on the OPRR investigation,

NIH suspended the remaining funding for the experiments, over $200,000, due to

violations of animal care guidelines.[23]

Fight for custody

In 1987, the custodians of 14 of the remaining animals recommended that eight

of them be euthanized, as they were judged to be beyond hope of rehabilitation and

resocialization. "It's the humane thing to do," said Dr. Peter J. Gerone, director

of the Delta Regional Primate Research Center. The animals had been moved to

the center in June 1986, from NIH, because the primate center had bigger and better facilities.

Animal rights activists, who had been able to visit and groom the animals at NIH,

were furious because they were denied visitation of the animals at the Delta Primate

Center. Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of PETA, said, "They have not been able to touch

human beings. We used to be able to visit, take fruit, at least groom them. Now they

just sit in metal boxes."[24] Attempts to move the animals to private sanctuaries were

strongly resisted by dozens of major scientific organizations fearful of setting a

precedent that would hamper the future use of animals in biomedical research.

A lawsuit, filed by PETA and others, sought to block euthanasia and transfer the

animals to a facility under their control, on the grounds that the monkeys could live

"safely, humanely, and comfortably if transferred to a suitable facility." The New

England Anti-Vivisection Society and PETA ran ads in The New York Times on

December 26, 1989, The Washington Post on December 27, and in The Washington

Times on January 3, 1990, asking President Reagan to save the monkeys and

concerned citizens to petition the White House.[25]

The director of the Tulane Regional Primate Center, where the monkeys were

housed after police raided the Maryland facility, told The Washington Post:

"They are going to fight very hard for every monkey because the more publicity

they get, the more money they bring in."[26]

Two sanctuaries, Moorpark College in California and Primarily Primates in Texas,

offered the monkeys a home, but the NIH refused to release them.[27] Pressured

by Congressmen Smith and Robert Dornan, NIH permitted a Moorpark team to

visit Delta in 1988 and examine the monkeys. Moorpark's Gary Wilson concluded

that "these animals are not in as poor condition as previous evaluations have indicated,"

and he volunteered to take all but one.[28]

Final experiments and euthanasia

The homunculii showing which parts of the body are controlled by the sensory cortex and

motor cortex. Taub's research on the Silver Spring monkeys challenged the paradigm that brain functions are fixed in certain locations.

The NIH had said in 1987 that no further invasive research would be conducted on the monkeys, but in fact further experiments were performed on them in 1990. NIH presented the experiments in the lawsuit for custody of the animals in 1989. It proposed to perform deep surgical anesthesia during all procedures followed by euthanasia. After euthanasia, tissue examination would continue. [27]

The court allowed a group of researchers from the NIH to conduct a terminal experiment on January 14, 1990 on one of the monkeys who had become ill. Under anesthesia, electrodes were placed in his brain and hundreds of recordings taken, revealing what the Laboratory Primate Newsletter called an "unprecedented degree of reorganization of the sensory cortex. An 8-10-millimeter wide area that would normally receive input from the hand was found to have completely filled in with input from the face."[29] Animal rights activists said the results were predictable and of no significance. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said: "Science has become secondary to public relations and politics."[29]

Brainmapping studies were conducted on the remaining monkeys on July 6, 1990, three days after PETA's application for custody was rejected. The monkeys were subsequently euthanized.[29] During these experiments, scientists discovered an unpredicted change in thalamus structure apparently caused by progressive nerve degeneration through the dorsal root ganglia (which were severed) and the dorsal columns all the way to the thalamus (a second order synaptic target).[30][31]

The monkeysIn the Institute of Behavioral Research, Taub was conducting deafferentation experiments on 16 male crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis), and one female rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), each about 14 inches tall, all born wild in the Philippines. The researchers had named them Chester — who was the leader of the group — Paul, Billy, Hard Times, Domitian, Nero, Titus, Big Boy, Augustus, Allen, Montaigne, Sisyphus, Charlie, Brooks, Hayden, and Adidas. The lone female was called Sarah.[14]Sarah was a control subject, which meant she had been left intact. She had been purchased from a dealer, Litton Laboratories, when she was one day old, and had lived since then, for eight years, in a 18 x 18 inch wire cage — cage #15 — with the other 16 monkeys in a windowless room measuring 15 ft square.

Pacheco writes that 12 of the seventeen had had one or both arms deafferented, while the

Laboratory Primate Newsletter reports that 10 had undergone deafferentation, the seven

others acting as the control group.[17]

Paul was the eldest. He had one arm deafferented, and had chewed off all the fingers on that hand

and pulled the skin and flesh off the palm, exposing the bone. Billy had undergone surgery to deafferent

both arms, and used his feet to pick up food pellets. Each monkey lived alone in its cage, with no

bedding or environmental enrichment, no food bowls, no veterinary assistance, and no natural light.[18]

Condition of the monkeys

Pacheco writes that, when he first saw them, twelve of the monkeys had deafferented limbs, with 39

of their fingers deformed or missing.[6] He describes them as neurotic, attacking their deafferented

limbs as though they were foreign objects:

“No one bothered to bandage the monkeys' injuries properly (on the few occasions when bandages

were used at all), and antibiotics were administered only once; no lacerations or self-amputation injuries

were ever cleaned. Whenever a bandage was applied, it was never changed, no matter how filthy

or soiled it became. They were left on until they deteriorated to the point where they fell off the injured limb.

Old, rotted fragments of bandage were stuck to the cage floors where they collected urine and faeces.

The monkeys also suffered from a variety of wounds that were self-inflicted or inflicted by monkeys

grabbing at them from adjoining cages. I saw discoloured, exposed muscle tissue on their arms.

Two monkeys had bones protruding through their flesh. Several had bitten off their own fingers

and had festering stubs, which they extended towards me as I discreetly took fruit from my pockets.

With these pitiful limbs they searched through the foul mess of their waste pans for something to eat.[6]

”

Pacheco testified at Taub's trial that five of the deafferented monkeys had mutilated themselves,

and that open sores ran the length of their arms.

Taub responded that the monkeys were otherwise healthy, that deafferented monkeys are

notoriously hard to look after, that no one had seen the monkeys in that condition other than

Pacheco, that at least two of the photographs Pacheco took were staged, in his view, and that

the presence of faeces and other dirt was normal.[13] The scientific community appeared split

over whether to defend Taub's version of events.

Several contributed financially to his legal costs, but Drs. William Raub and Joe Held, officials

at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had financed Taub's research, wrote in the

Neuroscience Newsletter in April 1983 that deafferented monkeys "subjected to the same

surgical procedure and maintained at [NIH] since May, 1981 have not developed lesions

comparable to those in five of the nine deafferented monkeys from IBR ... Based on these

observations it would appear that fractures, dislocations, lacerations, punctures, contusions,

and abrasions with accompanying infection, acute and chronic inflammation, and necrosis

are not the inevitable consequences of deafferentation."[20]

Gathering evidence

Pacheco visited the institute at night and took photographs that showed the monkeys'

living conditions.[21] Taub blamed those conditions on Pacheco who, he said, had

failed to clean the cages.

Pacheco arranged for scientists and veterinarians to visit the laboratory secretly, and

finally he reported the situation to the state police, who raided the laboratory under

Maryland's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law. Taub was convicted of six counts

of animal cruelty, later set aside by an appellate court.[21]

Taub responded to the allegations by saying he had been set up by PETA, and that

his laboratory had been clean when he left on vacation, but Pacheco had failed to

clean the cages, had neglected the animals, and had then subjected the laboratory

to false reports of cruelty. During Taub's 2.5 week vacation that August, on seven

different days in which the animals were supposed to have been fed and the cage

area cleaned, no one showed up to attend to the animals. Taub estimated the probability

of seven absences in that 2.5 week period at seven in a trillion based on the prior

14 months of attendance records from the workers. On three of those absentee

days, Pacheco brought people in to look at the monkeys. [22]

The National Institutes of Health initiated its own investigation, and sent the

Office for the Protection from Research Risks to assess the labs at IBR. OPRR

found that the lab animal care "failed in significant ways" and concluded that the

laboratory was "grossly unsanitary."[22] Based on the OPRR investigation,

NIH suspended the remaining funding for the experiments, over $200,000,

due to violations of animal care guidelines.[23]

Fight for custody

In 1987, the custodians of 14 of the remaining animals recommended that eight

of them be euthanized, as they were judged to be beyond hope of rehabilitation and

resocialization. "It's the humane thing to do," said Dr. Peter J. Gerone,

director of the Delta Regional Primate Research Center. The animals had been

moved to the center in June 1986, from NIH, because the primate center had bigger and better facilities.

Animal rights activists, who had been able to visit and groom the animals at NIH,

were furious because they were denied visitation of the animals at the Delta Primate

Center. Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of PETA, said, "They have not been able to

touch human beings. We used to be able to visit, take fruit, at least groom them.

Now they just sit in metal boxes."[24] Attempts to move the animals to private

sanctuaries were strongly resisted by dozens of major scientific organizations fearful

of setting a precedent that would hamper the future use of animals in biomedical research.

A lawsuit, filed by PETA and others, sought to block euthanasia and transfer the animals

to a facility under their control, on the grounds that the monkeys could live "safely, humanely,

and comfortably if transferred to a suitable facility." The New England Anti-Vivisection

Society and PETA ran ads in The New York Times on December 26, 1989, The Washington

Post on December 27, and in The Washington Times on January 3, 1990, asking

President Reagan to save the monkeys and concerned citizens to petition the White House.[25]

The director of the Tulane Regional Primate Center, where the monkeys were housed after

police raided the Maryland facility, told The Washington Post: "They are going to fight very

hard for every monkey because the more publicity they get, the more money they bring in."[26]

Two sanctuaries, Moorpark College in California and Primarily Primates in Texas, offered

the monkeys a home, but the NIH refused to release them.[27] Pressured by Congressmen

Smith and Robert Dornan, NIH permitted a Moorpark team to visit Delta in 1988 and

examine the monkeys. Moorpark's Gary Wilson concluded that "these animals are not in

as poor condition as previous evaluations have indicated," and he volunteered to take all but one.[28]

Final experiments and euthanasia

The homunculii showing which parts of the body are controlled by the sensory cortex and motor cortex. Taub's research on the Silver Spring monkeys challenged the paradigm that brain functions are fixed in certain locations.

Pacheco writes that 12 of the seventeen had had one or both arms deafferented, while

the Laboratory Primate Newsletter reports that 10 had undergone deafferentation, the

seven others acting as the control group.[17]

Paul was the eldest. He had one arm deafferented, and had chewed off all the fingers on that hand

and pulled the skin and flesh off the palm, exposing the bone. Billy had undergone surgery to

deafferent both arms, and used his feet to pick up food pellets. Each monkey lived alone in its

cage, with no bedding or environmental enrichment, no food bowls, no veterinary assistance, and no natural light.[18]

Contents·

1 Taub's research o

1.1 Deafferentation experimentso

1.2 Learned non-use·

2 The monkeys·

3 Pacheco's description of the laboratory o

3.1 Living conditionso

3.2 Condition of the monkeyso

3.3 Gathering evidence·

4 Fight for custody·

5 Final experiments and euthanasia·

6 Constraint-induced movement therapy·

7 Timeline·

8 See also·

9 Notes·

10 Further reading o

10.1 Selected papers by Edward Taub

Notes

^ Carbone, Larry. '"What Animal Want: Expertise and Advocacy in Laboratory Animal Welfare Policy. Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 76, see figure 4.2.

^ "Are we willing to fight for our research?"Author: David H. Hubel

Source: Annual Review of Neuroscience 1991 14:1-8

^ Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself. Viking Penguin 2007, p. 136.

^ Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself. Viking Penguin 2007, p. 136; Blum, Deborah. The Monkey Wars. Oxford University Press, paperback edition 1995, p. 106.

^ Johnson, David. Review of The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, curledup.com; see also Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself. Viking Penguin 2007, p. 141.

^ a b c d e f Pacheco, Alex and Francione, Anna. "The Silver Spring Monkeys" in Singer, Peter. In Defense of Animals. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp. 135-147; also see Boffey, Philip M. "Animals in the lab: Protests accelerate, but use is dropping", The New York Times, October 27, 1981.

^ Taub v. State, 296, Md 439 (1983).

^ Newkirk, Ingrid. Free the Animals. Lantern Books, 2000, p. xv.

^ Schwartz, Jeffrey and Begley, Sharon. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. HarperCollins, 2002 p. 161.

10.

^ Leary, Warren E. "Renewal of Brain Is Found In Disputed Monkey Tests", The New York Times, June 28, 1991.

11.

^ Schwartz and Begley, 2002 pp. 160, 162.

12.

^ Schwartz and Begley 2002, p. 160; "Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy", excerpted from "A Rehab Revolution," Stroke Connection Magazine, September/October 2004. Also see Doidge 2007, p. 134.

13.

^ a b Schwartz and Begley 2002, p. 149.

14.

^ a b c Carlson, Peter. "The Strange Case of the Silver Spring Monkeys," The Washington Post magazine, February 24, 1991.

15.

^ Doidge 2007, p. 139.

16.

^ Doidge 2007, p. 141.

17.

^ Clarke, A.S. 'Silver Spring' Monkeys at the San Diego Zoo, Research Department and Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species, Zoological Society of San Diego, Laboratory Primate Newsletter, Volume 27, No. 3, July 1988.

18.

^ Guillermo, Kathy Snow. Monkey Business. National Press Books, 1993, pp. 13, 14, 20; also see Pacheco, Alex and Francione, Anna. "The Silver Spring Monkeys" in Singer, Peter. In Defense of Animals. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp. 135-147.

19.

^ Schwartz and Begley 2002 p. 161.

20.

^ Raub, William and Held, Joe. Neuroscience Newsletter, April 1983, cited in Schwartz and Begley 2002, p. 149.

21.

^ a b Lisa Sideris, Charles McCarthy, and David H. Smith. "Bioethics of Laboratory Animal Research. Roots of Concern with Nonhuman Animals in Biomedical Ethics", ILAR Journal V40(1) 1999.

22.

^ a b "Scientist convicted for monkey neglect"

Author: Constance Holder

Science Magazine 11 Dec 1981 214:1218-20

23.

^ Boffey, Philip M. "Animals in the lab: Protests accelerate, but use is dropping", The New York Times, October 27, 1981.

24.

^ a b c d e Reinhold, Robert. "Fate of monkeys, deformed for science, causes human hurt after six years", The New York Times, May 23, 1987.

25.

^ Laboratory Primate Newsletter, Volume 28, Number 2, April 1989

26.

^ The Washington Post, January, 5 1989, page 7.

27.

^ a b Barnard, Neal D.; Selby, Roy; Robinson, Daniel N.; Schreckenberg, Gervasia M.; Van Petten, Carol. "NIH Research Protocol for Silver Spring Monkeys: A Case of Scientific Misconduct (Part I)", Americans For Medical Advancement. Part II

28.

^ The Washington Post, February 24, 1991.

29.

^ a b c Laboratory Primate Newsletter, Volume 29, Number 2, October 1990.

30.

^ Jones, E.G. and Pons, T.P. "Thalamic and brainstem contributions to large-scale plasticity of primate somatosensory cortex," Science, volume 282, issue 5391, 1998, pp. 1121-25. pmid 9804550

31.

^ Merzenich, M. "Long-term change of mind," Science, volume 282, issue 5391, 1998, pp. 1062-63. pmid 9841454

32.

^ a b "Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy", excerpted from "A Rehab Revolution," Stroke Connection Magazine, September/October 2004.

33.

^ Guillermo, Kathy Snow. Monkey Business. National Press Books, 1993, Chronology, no page numbers.

34.

^ "After Justices Act, Lab Monkeys Are Killed", Associated Press, April 13, 1991.