Silver Spring monkeys
Encyclopedia
The Silver Spring monkeys were 17 wild-born macaque
monkeys from the Philippines who lived inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland
. From 1981 until 1991, they became what one writer called the most famous lab animals in history, as a result of a battle between animal researchers, animal advocates, politicians, and the courts over whether to use them in research or release them to a sanctuary. Within the scientific community, the monkeys became known for their use in experiments into neuroplasticity
—the ability of the adult primate brain to reorganize itself—regarded as one of the most exciting discoveries of the 20th century.
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, then used arm slings to restrain either the good or deafferented arm to train them to use the limbs they could not feel. In May 1981, Alex Pacheco
of the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA) began working undercover in the lab, and alerted police to what PETA viewed as unacceptable living conditions for the monkeys. In what was the first police raid in the U.S. against an animal researcher, police entered the Institute and removed the monkeys, charging Taub with 17 counts of animal cruelty and failing to provide adequate veterinary care. He was convicted on six counts; five were overturned during a second trial, and the final conviction was overturned on appeal in 1983, when the court ruled that Maryland's animal cruelty legislation did not apply to federally funded laboratories.
The ensuing battle over the monkeys' custody saw celebrities and politicians campaign for the monkeys' release, an amendment in 1985 to the 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, and the first animal research case to reach the United States Supreme Court. In July 1991, PETA's application to the Supreme Court for custody was rejected, and days later the last of the monkeys were killed.
During the subsequent dissection of the monkeys, it was discovered that significant cortical remapping
had occurred, suggesting that being forced to use limbs with no sensory input had triggered changes in their brains' organization. This evidence of the brain's plasticity helped overturn the widely held view that the adult brain cannot reorganize itself in response to its environment. After five years of receiving death threats and being unable to find a research position, 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 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.
(born 1931) is a behavioral neuroscientist 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
, the experimental psychologists. He took a job as a research assistant in a neurology lab to gain more understanding of the nervous system
, and became involved in deafferentation experiments with monkeys.
An afferent nerve
is a sensory nerve that conveys impulses from the skin and other sensory organs to the spine and the brain. Deafferentation is a surgical procedure in which the spinal cord
is opened up and the sensory nerves cut so that these impulses do not reach the brain. A monkey whose limbs have been deafferented will not feel them, or even be able to sense where they are in space. At his trial in 1981, Taub told the court that deafferented monkeys are notoriously difficult to look after, because they regard their deafferented limbs as foreign objects, mutilating them and trying to chew them off. Taub continued working with deafferented monkeys at New York University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1970. Engaged in what he saw at first as pure research
, he conducted several kinds of deafferentation experiments. He deafferented monkeys' entire bodies, so that they could feel no part of themselves. He deafferented them at birth. He removed monkey fetuses from the uterus, deafferented them, then returned them to be born with no sense of their own bodies.
When Taub began his research in the neurology lab, the prevalent view was that monkeys would not be able to use limbs they could not feel. Norman Doidge
writes that Taub wondered whether the reason the monkeys abandoned use of the deafferented limbs was simply that they were still able to use their good ones. He tested his idea by deafferenting one arm of a monkey and restraining the good arm in a sling. The monkey subsequently used its deafferented arm to feed and move itself around. He reasoned that, if a monkey refused to use a deafferented arm because it could rely on its good arm, then deafferenting both arms would force the monkey to use them, a finding that seemed paradoxical, but which his experiments confirmed. He even deafferented the entire spinal cord, so that the monkey received no sensory input from any of its limbs, but it still used them. Doidge writes that Taub had an epiphany, guessing that the reason the monkeys would not use their deafferented limbs was simply because they had learned not to, an idea he called "learned non-use."
's Animal Liberation
(1973), stopped eating meat, and became an animal rights activist. He worked on the anti-whaling ship, the Sea Shepherd
, joined the Hunt Saboteurs Association
in England, and when he returned to the United States to study political science at George Washington, he teamed up with Ingrid Newkirk
, a local poundmaster, to form People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in March 1980. The point of taking the research position in Taub's lab was to gain firsthand experience of what happens in animal research laboratories, so he looked through a list of government-funded labs and chose the one nearest his home in Takoma Park. Taub offered him an unpaid position and put him to work with a student, Georgette Yakalis.
Inside the Institute for Behavioral Research, Taub was conducting deafferentation experiments on 16 male crab-eating macaque
s (Macaca fascicularis), and one female rhesus macaque
(Macaca mulatta), each about 14 inches tall, all born wild in the Philippines. Each monkey lived alone in a wire cage measuring 18 x 18 inches, with no bedding, no food bowl, and no environmental enrichment, the cages kept in a windowless room measuring 15 ft square. Pacheco writes that 12 of the 17 monkeys had had one or both arms deafferented, while according to the Laboratory Primate Newsletter 10 had undergone deafferentation, the seven others acting as the control group.
The researchers had named the monkeys Chester, Paul, Billy, Hard Times, Domitian, Nero, Titus, Big Boy, Augustus, Allen, Montaigne, Sisyphus, Charlie, Brooks, Hayden, Adidas, and Sarah. Sarah, the lone female, 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 the Institute. Paul was the eldest. He had had one arm deafferented. He 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.
, who gave him money for a better camera and some walkie-talkies, so that a look-out outside could alert him if visitors arrived unexpectedly. In August, Pacheco began inviting veterinarians and scientists into the lab to witness the conditions. According to The Washington Post, Geza Teleki, a primatologist at George Washington University, wrote that he had never seen a lab so poorly maintained, and psychologist Donald Barnes, a former primate researcher, wrote that it was a "miserable and unhealthful environment for the primates" and a health hazard for humans. One local veterinarian, Richard Weitzman, agreed that the lab was very dirty, but said the monkeys seemed well fed and "in pretty good health."
Pacheco reported the situation to the Montgomery state police, who raided the laboratory on September 11, 1981 under Maryland's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law. PETA tipped off the media beforehand, so that the raid was witnessed by several reporters and a camera crew, to the irritation of the police. The officers later testified that the monkeys were living in filthy conditions. Richard Swain, who led the raid, told The Washington Post in 1991: "It was absolutely filthy, just incredibly dirty, like nothing I've ever been in. I've executed lots and lots of search warrants. I've worked in murder, in narcotics, in vice, but this was the first time I went into a room and I felt legitimately concerned for my health just being there." Taub was charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty and failing to provide adequate veterinary care.
The police removed the monkeys from the lab to the basement of a house in Rockeville owned by Lori Kenealy of the local humane society. Peter Carlson writes in The Washington Post that they were given toys, groomed with toothbrushes by the activists, watched 24 hours a day, and allowed to watch daytime soap operas. In the meantime, Taub's lawyers went to court and demanded their return, and ten days after the raid a judge granted the request. And suddenly, Carlson writes, the monkeys disappeared. Kenealy was not at home when it happened, and insisted she knew nothing about it. Richard Swain, who had led the police raid, arrested her and put her in the local jail overnight. PETA was told there could be no legal action against Taub without the monkeys as evidence. Carlson writes that, just as suddenly as they had disappeared, they were returned five days later, this time with Spanish moss in their cages after a holiday in Florida, according to the activists. After another brief stand-off, the monkeys were returned to Taub.
During the trial in October and November 1981 of Taub and Kunz, Taub told the court—as reported by The Baltimore Sun—that the monkeys had been given "gentle" treatment, and had what he called a "remarkable record of health." He acknowledged that they had not been seen by a veterinarian in the previous two years, because he was an expert himself in the treatment of deafferented monkeys. Responding to the images of the monkeys with open sores and decaying bandages, he said that using salves, ointments, and bandages is more dangerous than leaving the conditions untreated; monkeys feel no pain from the deafferented limbs and learn to ignore them, he said, whereas drawing attention to the wounds with salves or bandages would cause the animals to bite or claw at them. Bandages might be necessary where the wounds had grown out of control, or where there was massive infection, and it was sometimes better to let the bandages deteriorate, he said. Taub also testified that some of the photographs Pacheco took had been staged for dramatic effect. Norman Doidge wrote in 2007 that, according to Taub, the monkeys in the photographs had been placed in positions that were not part of the laboratory procedure, a claim Pacheco denied. As for the dirt, Taub said "monkey rooms are dirty places," and that it was normal in laboratories for fecal matter to lie on the floor and food to drop through the cage bottoms into waste trays. He said employees had used brooms and mops on the floor, and had emptied the waste trays nearly every day. He said the monkeys had been given fresh fruit twice a week, and that he disagreed with the veterinarians who testified for the prosecution that the female monkey, Sarah, was underweight.
are not the inevitable consequences of deafferentation." After the appeal, according to Doidge writing in 2007, 67 professional societies made representations on Taub's behalf, and the NIH reversed its decision not to fund his research. In 1991 neuroscientist David Hubel, referring to both the Silver Spring monkeys case and a PETA film
about the University of Pennsylvania's head injury clinic in 1984, said the science was sound, that the people involved were not cruel, and that at the time there was a "laxness of standards" in animal care that, he wrote, would hardly be conceivable today.
They were moved by the NIH to the Delta Primate Center in June 1986, where animal rights activists, who had been able to visit and groom the animals at the previous center, were told they could no longer see them. In 1987, the custodians of 14 of the remaining monkeys recommended that eight of them be euthanized, because they were judged to be beyond hope of resocialization. A lawsuit filed by PETA and others sought to block euthanasia and transfer the animals to a facility under their control. 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 Bush to save the monkeys, and concerned citizens to petition the White House. After the court denied custody to PETA, two of the monkeys, Titus and Allen, were kept for the National Institutes of Health at a Tulane University primate center, where they were later euthanized.
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. 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. The Laboratory Primate Newsletter said it revealed 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." 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. 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).
(CI), as "at the forefront of a revolution" in the treatment of stroke survivors. With CI therapy, the patient is forced to use the affected limb, to whatever minimal extent he can, by having the unaffected one restrained. The affected limb is then used intensively for three to six hours each day for at least two weeks. As a result of engaging in repetitive movements with the affected limb, the brain grows new neural pathways
that control the limb's use, as a result of which stroke victims who were seriously disabled for many years have reportedly regained the use of limbs that were almost completely paralysed.
Selected papers by Edward Taub
Macaque
The macaques constitute a genus of Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. - Description :Aside from humans , the macaques are the most widespread primate genus, ranging from Japan to Afghanistan and, in the case of the barbary macaque, to North Africa...
monkeys from the Philippines who lived inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland
Silver Spring, Maryland
Silver Spring is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It had a population of 71,452 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth most populous place in Maryland, after Baltimore, Columbia, and Germantown.The urbanized, oldest, and...
. From 1981 until 1991, they became what one writer called the most famous lab animals in history, as a result of a battle between animal researchers, animal advocates, politicians, and the courts over whether to use them in research or release them to a sanctuary. Within the scientific community, the monkeys became known for their use in experiments into neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is a non-specific neuroscience term referring to the ability of the brain and nervous system in all species to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment. Plasticity occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes involved in...
—the ability of the adult primate brain to reorganize itself—regarded as one of the most exciting discoveries of the 20th century.
The monkeys had been used as research subjects by Edward Taub
Edward Taub
Edward Taub is a behavioral neuroscientist on faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is best known for his involvement in the Silver Spring monkeys case and for making major breakthroughs in the area of neuroplasticity and discovering/developing constraint-induced movement therapy;...
, a psychologist, who had cut afferent ganglia
Dorsal root ganglion
In anatomy and neuroscience, a dorsal root ganglion is a nodule on a dorsal root that contains cell bodies of neurons in afferent spinal nerves.-Unique unipolar structure:...
that supplied sensation to the brain from their arms, then used arm slings to restrain either the good or deafferented arm to train them to use the limbs they could not feel. In May 1981, Alex Pacheco
Alex Pacheco (activist)
Alexander Fernando Pacheco is an American animal rights activist. He is the co-founder and former chairman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...
of the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights...
(PETA) began working undercover in the lab, and alerted police to what PETA viewed as unacceptable living conditions for the monkeys. In what was the first police raid in the U.S. against an animal researcher, police entered the Institute and removed the monkeys, charging Taub with 17 counts of animal cruelty and failing to provide adequate veterinary care. He was convicted on six counts; five were overturned during a second trial, and the final conviction was overturned on appeal in 1983, when the court ruled that Maryland's animal cruelty legislation did not apply to federally funded laboratories.
The ensuing battle over the monkeys' custody saw celebrities and politicians campaign for the monkeys' release, an amendment in 1985 to the 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
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...
cell, and the first animal research case to reach the United States Supreme Court. In July 1991, PETA's application to the Supreme Court for custody was rejected, and days later the last of the monkeys were killed.
During the subsequent dissection of the monkeys, it was discovered that significant cortical remapping
Cortical map
Cortical maps are collections of minicolumns in the brain cortex that have been identified as performing a specific information processing function ....
had occurred, suggesting that being forced to use limbs with no sensory input had triggered changes in their brains' organization. This evidence of the brain's plasticity helped overturn the widely held view that the adult brain cannot reorganize itself in response to its environment. After five years of receiving death threats and being unable to find a research position, 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 disabled as a result of brain damage. Known as constraint-induced movement therapy
Constraint-induced movement therapy
Constraint-induced movement therapy is a form of rehabilitation therapy that improves upper extremity function in stroke and other Central Nervous System damage victims by increasing the use of their affected upper limb....
, 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.
Edward Taub
Edward TaubEdward Taub
Edward Taub is a behavioral neuroscientist on faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is best known for his involvement in the Silver Spring monkeys case and for making major breakthroughs in the area of neuroplasticity and discovering/developing constraint-induced movement therapy;...
(born 1931) is a behavioral neuroscientist currently based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
University of Alabama at Birmingham
The University of Alabama at Birmingham is a public university in Birmingham in the U.S. state of Alabama. Developing from an extension center established in 1936, the institution became an autonomous institution in 1969 and is today one of three institutions in the University of Alabama System...
. He became interested in behaviorism
Behaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
while studying philosophy at Columbia University, and went on to study under Fred Keller
Fred S. Keller
Fred Simmons Keller was a pioneer in experimental psychology. He taught at Columbia University for 26 years and gave his name to the Keller Plan, also known as Personalized System of Instruction an individually paced, mastery-oriented teaching method that has had a significant impact on...
and Wiliam N. Schoenfeld
William N. Schoenfeld
William N. Schoenfeld was an American psychologist and author.Born in New York City, he conducted original research in experimental psychology, and advocated behaviorism, which seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of experiencing consequences. Dr...
, the experimental psychologists. He took a job as a research assistant in a neurology lab to gain more understanding of the nervous system
Nervous system
The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...
, and became involved in deafferentation experiments with monkeys.
An afferent nerve
Afferent nerve
In the nervous system, afferent neurons , carry nerve impulses from receptors or sense organs towards the central nervous system. This term can also be used to describe relative connections between structures. Afferent neurons communicate with specialized interneurons...
is a sensory nerve that conveys impulses from the skin and other sensory organs to the spine and the brain. Deafferentation is a surgical procedure in which the spinal cord
Spinal cord
The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular bundle of nervous tissue and support cells that extends from the brain . The brain and spinal cord together make up the central nervous system...
is opened up and the sensory nerves cut so that these impulses do not reach the brain. A monkey whose limbs have been deafferented will not feel them, or even be able to sense where they are in space. At his trial in 1981, Taub told the court that deafferented monkeys are notoriously difficult to look after, because they regard their deafferented limbs as foreign objects, mutilating them and trying to chew them off. Taub continued working with deafferented monkeys at New York University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1970. Engaged in what he saw at first as pure research
Pure research
Pure research, basic research, or fundamental research is research carried out to increase understanding of fundamental principles. Many times the end results have no direct or immediate commercial benefits: pure research can be thought of as arising out of curiosity. However, in the long term it...
, he conducted several kinds of deafferentation experiments. He deafferented monkeys' entire bodies, so that they could feel no part of themselves. He deafferented them at birth. He removed monkey fetuses from the uterus, deafferented them, then returned them to be born with no sense of their own bodies.
When Taub began his research in the neurology lab, the prevalent view was that monkeys would not be able to use limbs they could not feel. Norman Doidge
Norman Doidge
Norman Doidge MD, FRCP is a Canadian-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, essayist, poet and author of The Brain That Changes Itself . The Brain That Changes Itself describes some of the latest developments in neuroscience, and became a New York Times and international bestseller...
writes that Taub wondered whether the reason the monkeys abandoned use of the deafferented limbs was simply that they were still able to use their good ones. He tested his idea by deafferenting one arm of a monkey and restraining the good arm in a sling. The monkey subsequently used its deafferented arm to feed and move itself around. He reasoned that, if a monkey refused to use a deafferented arm because it could rely on its good arm, then deafferenting both arms would force the monkey to use them, a finding that seemed paradoxical, but which his experiments confirmed. He even deafferented the entire spinal cord, so that the monkey received no sensory input from any of its limbs, but it still used them. Doidge writes that Taub had an epiphany, guessing that the reason the monkeys would not use their deafferented limbs was simply because they had learned not to, an idea he called "learned non-use."
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 in Taub's lab. The Washington Post writes that he was raised in Mexico, the son of a doctor, and wanted to become a priest. He took a tour of a slaughterhouse in the 1970s and said it changed his life; he read Peter SingerPeter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
's Animal Liberation
Animal Liberation (book)
Animal Liberation is a book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, published in 1975.The book is widely considered within the animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas...
(1973), stopped eating meat, and became an animal rights activist. He worked on the anti-whaling ship, the Sea Shepherd
Sea Shepherd
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is a non-profit, marine conservation organization based in Friday Harbor, Washington in the United States. The group uses direct action tactics to protect sealife...
, joined the Hunt Saboteurs Association
Hunt Saboteurs Association
The Hunt Saboteurs Association is a worldwide organization using direct action to stop the hunting of animals. HSA activists use a model of leaderless resistance and have been using the same basic tactics since their inception in 1963; the underlying principle being to directly intervene in a...
in England, and when he returned to the United States to study political science at George Washington, he teamed up with Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk is a British-born animal rights activist and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , the world's largest animal rights organization...
, a local poundmaster, to form People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in March 1980. The point of taking the research position in Taub's lab was to gain firsthand experience of what happens in animal research laboratories, so he looked through a list of government-funded labs and chose the one nearest his home in Takoma Park. Taub offered him an unpaid position and put him to work with a student, Georgette Yakalis.
The monkeys
Crab-eating Macaque
The Crab-eating macaque is a cercopithecine primate native to Southeast Asia. It is also called the "long-tailed macaque", and is referred to as the "cynomolgus monkey" in laboratories.-Etymology:...
s (Macaca fascicularis), and one female rhesus macaque
Rhesus Macaque
The Rhesus macaque , also called the Rhesus monkey, is one of the best-known species of Old World monkeys. It is listed as Least Concern in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in view of its wide distribution, presumed large population, and its tolerance of a broad range of habitats...
(Macaca mulatta), each about 14 inches tall, all born wild in the Philippines. Each monkey lived alone in a wire cage measuring 18 x 18 inches, with no bedding, no food bowl, and no environmental enrichment, the cages kept in a windowless room measuring 15 ft square. Pacheco writes that 12 of the 17 monkeys had had one or both arms deafferented, while according to the Laboratory Primate Newsletter 10 had undergone deafferentation, the seven others acting as the control group.
The researchers had named the monkeys Chester, Paul, Billy, Hard Times, Domitian, Nero, Titus, Big Boy, Augustus, Allen, Montaigne, Sisyphus, Charlie, Brooks, Hayden, Adidas, and Sarah. Sarah, the lone female, 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 the Institute. Paul was the eldest. He had had one arm deafferented. He 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.
Pacheco's description of the laboratory
Pacheco wrote that he found the monkeys living in filthy conditions. He found frozen monkey corpses in a refrigerator, and others floating in formaldehyde. He alleged 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. He said the wires of the cages were caked in filth, with feces piled in the bottom of the cages, and urine and rust on every surface, with the 17 monkeys picking at scraps of food that had fallen through the wire floor of the cages into the waste tray below. He alleged that the cages had not been cleaned for months, that were no dishes to keep the food away from the feces, and that there was nothing for the monkeys to sit on but the cages' wire bottoms. He wrote that 12 of the monkeys had deafferented limbs, with 39 of their fingers deformed or missing. He described them as neurotic, attacking their deafferented limbs as though they were foreign objects:Informal inspections and raid
Pacheco decided to document the conditions in the lab. He told Taub he wanted to work at night, and took photographs that showed the monkeys' living conditions. He showed them in July to animal rights activists, including Cleveland AmoryCleveland Amory
Cleveland Amory was an American author who devoted his life to promoting animal rights. He was perhaps best known for his books about his cat, named Polar Bear, whom he saved from the Manhattan streets on Christmas Eve 1977...
, who gave him money for a better camera and some walkie-talkies, so that a look-out outside could alert him if visitors arrived unexpectedly. In August, Pacheco began inviting veterinarians and scientists into the lab to witness the conditions. According to The Washington Post, Geza Teleki, a primatologist at George Washington University, wrote that he had never seen a lab so poorly maintained, and psychologist Donald Barnes, a former primate researcher, wrote that it was a "miserable and unhealthful environment for the primates" and a health hazard for humans. One local veterinarian, Richard Weitzman, agreed that the lab was very dirty, but said the monkeys seemed well fed and "in pretty good health."
Pacheco reported the situation to the Montgomery state police, who raided the laboratory on September 11, 1981 under Maryland's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law. PETA tipped off the media beforehand, so that the raid was witnessed by several reporters and a camera crew, to the irritation of the police. The officers later testified that the monkeys were living in filthy conditions. Richard Swain, who led the raid, told The Washington Post in 1991: "It was absolutely filthy, just incredibly dirty, like nothing I've ever been in. I've executed lots and lots of search warrants. I've worked in murder, in narcotics, in vice, but this was the first time I went into a room and I felt legitimately concerned for my health just being there." Taub was charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty and failing to provide adequate veterinary care.
The police removed the monkeys from the lab to the basement of a house in Rockeville owned by Lori Kenealy of the local humane society. Peter Carlson writes in The Washington Post that they were given toys, groomed with toothbrushes by the activists, watched 24 hours a day, and allowed to watch daytime soap operas. In the meantime, Taub's lawyers went to court and demanded their return, and ten days after the raid a judge granted the request. And suddenly, Carlson writes, the monkeys disappeared. Kenealy was not at home when it happened, and insisted she knew nothing about it. Richard Swain, who had led the police raid, arrested her and put her in the local jail overnight. PETA was told there could be no legal action against Taub without the monkeys as evidence. Carlson writes that, just as suddenly as they had disappeared, they were returned five days later, this time with Spanish moss in their cages after a holiday in Florida, according to the activists. After another brief stand-off, the monkeys were returned to Taub.
Taub's response
Taub said he had been set up. He said his laboratory had been clean when he left on vacation, but that Pacheco had failed to clean the cages, had neglected the animals, then subjected the laboratory to false reports of cruelty. During Taub's vacation that August, which lasted over two weeks, on seven different days in which the animals were supposed to have been fed and the cage area cleaned, the two caretakers failed to show up for work. Taub estimated the probability of seven absences in that 2.5 week period at seven in a trillion based on the previous 14 months of attendance records from the workers. On three of those absentee days, Pacheco brought people in to look at the monkeys. Taub's research assistant, John Kunz, a graduate student, said it was simply that the caretakers took advantage of Taub's absence to have a holiday of their own.During the trial in October and November 1981 of Taub and Kunz, Taub told the court—as reported by The Baltimore Sun—that the monkeys had been given "gentle" treatment, and had what he called a "remarkable record of health." He acknowledged that they had not been seen by a veterinarian in the previous two years, because he was an expert himself in the treatment of deafferented monkeys. Responding to the images of the monkeys with open sores and decaying bandages, he said that using salves, ointments, and bandages is more dangerous than leaving the conditions untreated; monkeys feel no pain from the deafferented limbs and learn to ignore them, he said, whereas drawing attention to the wounds with salves or bandages would cause the animals to bite or claw at them. Bandages might be necessary where the wounds had grown out of control, or where there was massive infection, and it was sometimes better to let the bandages deteriorate, he said. Taub also testified that some of the photographs Pacheco took had been staged for dramatic effect. Norman Doidge wrote in 2007 that, according to Taub, the monkeys in the photographs had been placed in positions that were not part of the laboratory procedure, a claim Pacheco denied. As for the dirt, Taub said "monkey rooms are dirty places," and that it was normal in laboratories for fecal matter to lie on the floor and food to drop through the cage bottoms into waste trays. He said employees had used brooms and mops on the floor, and had emptied the waste trays nearly every day. He said the monkeys had been given fresh fruit twice a week, and that he disagreed with the veterinarians who testified for the prosecution that the female monkey, Sarah, was underweight.
National Institutes of Health investigation
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had financed Taub's research, suspended his $115,000 research grant. It initiated its own investigation, and sent the Office for the Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) to assess Taub's lab. OPRR found that the lab's animal care failed in significant ways, and concluded that it was grossly unsanitary. Based on the OPRR investigation, NIH suspended the remaining funding for the experiments, over $200,000, because of violations of its animal care guidelines. William Raub and Joe Held, officials at NIH, wrote in the Neuroscience Newsletter in April 1983 that deafferented monkeys kept at NIH since May 1981, and subjected to the same surgical procedures, had not developed lesions comparable to those in five of the deafferented monkeys from Taub's lab. "Based on these observations," they wrote, "it would appear that fractures, dislocations, lacerations, punctures, contusions, and abrasions with accompanying infection, acute and chronic inflammation, and necrosisNecrosis
Necrosis is the premature death of cells in living tissue. Necrosis is caused by factors external to the cell or tissue, such as infection, toxins, or trauma. This is in contrast to apoptosis, which is a naturally occurring cause of cellular death...
are not the inevitable consequences of deafferentation." After the appeal, according to Doidge writing in 2007, 67 professional societies made representations on Taub's behalf, and the NIH reversed its decision not to fund his research. In 1991 neuroscientist David Hubel, referring to both the Silver Spring monkeys case and a PETA film
Unnecessary Fuss
Unnecessary Fuss is a film produced by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , showing footage shot inside the University of Pennsylvania's Head Injury Clinic in Philadelphia....
about the University of Pennsylvania's head injury clinic in 1984, said the science was sound, that the people involved were not cruel, and that at the time there was a "laxness of standards" in animal care that, he wrote, would hardly be conceivable today.
First trial (October 1981)
According to Peter Carlson, every aspect of the case was disputed by experts on both sides during the first trial in October 1981. The prosecution said that Taub's lab was filthy and unhealthy, and federal inspection reports and witnesses supported the charge. Taub said the lab was no dirtier than any other, and he also produced federal inspection reports and witnesses to support his position. Veterinarians speaking for the prosecution said Taub's failure to bandage the monkeys' wounds was a threat to their health; veterinarians for the defense, including two who had worked with monkeys whose limbs had been deafferented, said bandaging them would cause the animals to attack the limbs. Carlson writes that the prosecution produced 70 photographs of dirty conditions and injured monkeys, while researchers who had worked in the lab testified for the defense that they had never seen the lab looking like that. The judge—District Court Judge Stanley Klavan—found Taub guilty of six counts of cruelty to animals for failing to provide adequate veterinary care in respect of six of the monkeys, and acquitted him of the other 11 charges against him. He fined Taub $3,000. The laboratory assistant, John Kunz, was acquitted of all 17 charges.Second trial and appeal (1982 and 1983)
Taub managed to secure a second trial in June 1982. After three weeks at the Montgomery County Circuit Court, a jury acquitted him of five of the convictions, and upheld the sixth charge of inadequate veterinary care of Nero, whose wounds were such that an NIH veterinarian later amputated his deafferented arm. Taub was fined $500. The sixth charge was set aside on appeal, when the court ruled that Maryland's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law did not apply to federally funded laboratories.Fight for custody
After the monkeys were returned to Taub's custody, they were transferred to an NIH facility. They were later removed to the Tulane Regional Primate Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, still under the care and control of the NIH. Two primate sanctuaries, Moorpark College in California and Primarily Primates in Texas, offered them a permanent home, but the NIH refused to release them.They were moved by the NIH to the Delta Primate Center in June 1986, where animal rights activists, who had been able to visit and groom the animals at the previous center, were told they could no longer see them. In 1987, the custodians of 14 of the remaining monkeys recommended that eight of them be euthanized, because they were judged to be beyond hope of resocialization. A lawsuit filed by PETA and others sought to block euthanasia and transfer the animals to a facility under their control. 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 Bush to save the monkeys, and concerned citizens to petition the White House. After the court denied custody to PETA, two of the monkeys, Titus and Allen, were kept for the National Institutes of Health at a Tulane University primate center, where they were later euthanized.
Final experiments and euthanasia
Thalamus
The thalamus is a midline paired symmetrical structure within the brains of vertebrates, including humans. It is situated between the cerebral cortex and midbrain, both in terms of location and neurological connections...
(a second order synaptic target).
Constraint-induced movement therapy
Based in part on his work with the Silver Spring monkeys, Taub went on to develop novel physical therapy techniques to help stroke victims, and those with other forms of brain injury, regain the use of affected limbs. The American Stroke Association regards Taub's therapy, known as constraint-induced movement therapyConstraint-induced movement therapy
Constraint-induced movement therapy is a form of rehabilitation therapy that improves upper extremity function in stroke and other Central Nervous System damage victims by increasing the use of their affected upper limb....
(CI), as "at the forefront of a revolution" in the treatment of stroke survivors. With CI therapy, the patient is forced to use the affected limb, to whatever minimal extent he can, by having the unaffected one restrained. The affected limb is then used intensively for three to six hours each day for at least two weeks. As a result of engaging in repetitive movements with the affected limb, the brain grows new neural pathways
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is a non-specific neuroscience term referring to the ability of the brain and nervous system in all species to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment. Plasticity occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes involved in...
that control the limb's use, as a result of which stroke victims who were seriously disabled for many years have reportedly regained the use of limbs that were almost completely paralysed.
Further reading
- "Judge Refuses to Prevent Deaths of Monkeys in Federal Laboratory", The New York Times, July 1, 1990.
- "High Court Justice Blocks Killing of Two Monkeys in Experiments", Associated Press, April 11, 1991.
Selected papers by Edward Taub
- Taub, Edward; Perrella, Philip; Barro, Gilbert. "Behavioral Development after Forelimb Deafferentation on Day of Birth in Monkeys with and without Blinding", Science, Vol. 181. no. 4103, September 7, 1973, pp. 959–960.
- Taub, E. "Movement in nonhuman primates deprived of somatosensory feedback", Exercise and Sports Science Reviews, Vol. 4 (pp. 335–374), 1977.
- Taub, E. "Somatosensory deafferentation research with monkeys: Implications for rehabilitation medicine". In L. P. Ince (ed.). Behavioral Psychology in Rehabilitation Medicine: Clinical Applications (pp. 371–401), Williams & Wilkins Co., 1980.
- Taub, E. "Overcoming learned nonuse: A new behavioral medicine approach to physical medicine". In J. G. Carlson, S. R. Seifert, & N. Birbaumer. (eds.) Clinical Applied Psychophysiology (pp. 185–220), Springer, 1994.
- Taub, E., Burgio, L., Miller, N. E., Cook, E.W. III, Groomes, T., DeLuca, S., & Crago, J. "An operant approach to overcoming learned nonuse after CNS damage in monkeys and man: The role of shaping," Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 61, 281-293, 1994.
- Taub, E., & Crago, J. E. "Behavioral plasticity following central nervous system damage in monkeys and man". In B.Julesz & I. Kovacs (eds.). Maturational Windows and Adult Cortical Plasticity. Vol. 23 (pp. 201–215), Addison-Wesley, 1995.
- Taub, E., Pidikiti, R. D., DeLuca, S. C., & Crago, J. E. "Effects of motor restriction of an unimpaired upper extremity and training on improving functional tasks and altering brain/behaviors". In J. Toole (ed.). Imaging and Neurologic Rehabilitation (pp. 133–154), Demos Vermande, 1996.
- Taub, E., & Wolf, S.L. "Constraint-Induced (CI) Movement techniques to facilitate upper extremity use in stroke patients," Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, 3, 38-61, 1997.