June
2000
Raised
in Fear: Monkey Experiments are Funded at Taxpayers’ Expense
By Scott Lustig
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For over 30 years at the State University of New York
(SUNY) Health Science Center in Brooklyn, Professor Leonard Rosenblum
has been tearing baby monkeys away from their mothers to induce anxiety,
panic and depression. Why? To study the effects of maternal deprivation
on the development of panic and other anxiety disorders in children
and to investigate the workings of these disorders. But 50 years of
research from clinical (human) studies have already demonstrated that
children raised in stressful conditions and denied their mother’s
attention are more likely to develop anxiety disorders in later life.
Still, the monkey experiments continue at huge expense. Indeed, since
1990, Rosenblum has collected over $2.5 million in taxpayers’ money,
on top of several more millions received over the last three decades.
The National Institutes of Health serves as a primary public source
for his funds.
Raised in Fear
In his most common experimental model, Rosenblum forces macaque
monkey mothers and infants to live with unpredictable access to food.
At first, the mothers find food easily. Then, the food is hidden and
dispersed, making it hard to gather. The mother monkeys must repeatedly
endure this alternating access to food. Unable to feed their infants
regularly, the mothers suffer constant anxiety. The babies, in turn,
deprived of their mother, become isolated and withdrawn. These normally
playful, curious infant monkeys sit hunched over, crying, shaking and
clasping themselves. When the infants’ mother returns, they cling
to her desperately, never knowing when she will unpredictably be forced
away from them again.
Three decades after Woodstock and Neil Armstrong’s walk on the
moon, Rosenblum’s severely painful and invasive experiments are
continuing. He began them in the 1960s, when monkey maternal deprivation
experiments were first conceived. At the time, it was thought that monkey
experimentation would shed light on the association between maternal
deprivation and psychological distress in humans, first identified by
researchers in the 1940s and 50s. Since then, infant monkeys have been
subjected to numerous cruelties in the name of "research,"
all varying in the nature of the deprivation and isolation forced upon
them. Infant monkeys have been given artificial "puppet" mothers
that are manipulated by researchers. In some experiments, their body
temperatures are made ice cold, preventing the infants from clinging
to them. Other artificial "mothers" have been constructed
of sandpaper or other uncomfortable materials, and some "mothers"
even dislodged the clinging infants with hidden spikes, catapults, compressed
air, or vigorous shaking.
Researchers have also placed mother-deprived infants with foster mothers,
then repeatedly deprived them of the foster mothers and placed them
with other foster mothers, preventing the infant monkeys from ever experiencing
any real bonding or maternal care. In one of the most egregious of maternal
deprivation experiments, during the early 1970s University of Wisconsin’s
Harry Harlow confined infant monkeys alone for weeks in metal isolation
chambers. Harlow himself referred to these chambers as "a modified
form of sadism." In addition to monkeys, other animals used in
maternal deprivation research have included rats, dogs and cats.
Other researchers today besides Rosenblum perpetuate this cruel practice.
At Emory University in Georgia, Charles Nemeroff, Paul Plotsky, Charlotte
Ladd, and a host of other researchers are studying the mechanisms of
certain brain chemicals involved in producing the distress reaction
to maternal deprivation. These experiments have including subjecting
monkeys to the same model of unpredictable food access "perfected"
by Rosenblum. At the University of Wisconsin, Gary Kraemer deprives
female infant marmosat monkeys of maternal attention in order to study
the neurochemical reasons why female human children who are raised abusively
and neglectfully tend to become abusive and neglectful themselves as
mothers.
Conflict and Inconsistency
Animal advocates, along with a growing number of scientists, have
criticized the experiments of Rosenblum and his colleagues. According
to Stephen Suomi, himself a noted and continuing maternal deprivation
researcher, "Most monkey data...have only verified principles that
have already been formulated from previous human data. To date the monkey
data have added little to knowledge of mother-infant interactions."
Murray Cohen, a psychiatrist and director of the Medical Research Modernization
Committee, says that Rosenblum’s animal studies do not validly
represent panic and other human psychological disorders. Cohen says,
"Rosenblum knows that the diagnostic symptoms of panic disorder
(e.g., palpitations, sensation of respiratory distress, feeling of choking,
chest pain...feeling of loss of control, fear of dying, numbness) simply
cannot be assessed in monkeys because these symptoms must be subjectively
experienced and reported by the patient rather than observed by the
clinician. The diagnosis, then, cannot, by definition, be given to non-human
primates."
Among Dr. Cohen’s other arguments are that monkeys differ in reactions
to maternal deprivation depending on their species, making it impossible
to determine which species is the valid model for humans. Moreover,
Cohen argues that aside from the stress they suffer from deprivation
experiments, the monkeys suffer additional stress from the injections,
restraining jackets, and other devices and tests they are forced to
undergo. Also stressful are the standard conditions of the lab, including
repeated transport and handling, artificial lighting, caging, noise
levels and chemical sterilizers. These types of laboratory stressors
influence the monkeys’ behavior and physiology, distorting the
research results.
The gamut of maternal deprivation experiments, including those being
conducted by Rosenblum, are fraught with conflicting and inconsistent
data, according to Martin Stephens, Vice President for Animal Research
Issues at the Humane Society of the United States. Stephens states that
in the majority of experiments, the monkeys’ responses have contrasted
widely with what the researchers’ had expected based upon information
from previous experiments. "The time is long past when such experiments,
which cause considerable distress in animals, are tolerable," says
Neal Barnard, psychiatrist and president of Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine. "These vaguely rationalized and obviously
distressing experiments should not have been done."
Even Rosenblum himself has cast doubt on his own research, writing in
1995: "Because of limitations imposed on the interpretation of
behaviors observed in nonverbal primate subjects, extrapolations of
primate findings to human panic and anxiety should be made with caution."
(Psychiatric Clinics of North America) And, cementing the fundamentally
weak usefulness of Rosenblum’s studies for making sound contributions
to understanding of panic and other anxiety disorders, the esteemed
British medical journal The Lancet stated succinctly, "animal models
of anxiety cannot substitute for clinical [human] studies." (10/3/98)
Money Wasted, Human Needs Unmet
Currently, 16 million Americans suffer from panic and other anxiety
disorders. Thankfully, many are getting help through therapy and medication—treatments
developed through clinical studies with humans, not animals. But while
Rosenblum’s research continues to attract large amounts of funding,
the needs of many human anxiety disorder sufferers go unmet. Even though
one of the stated purposes of Rosenblum’s research is to help children
suffering from anxiety disorders, the New York Times reported last December
that nearly 400 severely mentally ill children in New York State alone
(where Rosenblum works) are on waiting lists to enter residential treatment
facilities, "but cannot be admitted because the existing facilities
are filled to capacity. They are languishing in hospitals, foster care,
or jail." (12/24/99)
Shortages of funding also hamper provision of clinical treatment services
like outpatient therapy, medication, mobile crisis teams and day treatment—all
increasing the risk that children with anxiety disorders will experience
suicide, school violence, juvenile crime and family break-up.
Criticism of animal models is further justified by the availability
today of technologies in brain imaging, like positron emission tomography
(PET) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), which are providing
more accurate data on human brain processes. As the mental disorders
research community has become more familiar with the usefulness of these
devices, it has become more outspoken in admitting to the weakness of
animal models—while at the same time advocating for further study
into the potential of other non-animal research tools. According to
an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry (May, 1999), "From
reliance on animal models of psychopathology with all of their shortcomings,
the field has evolved to the use of multidisciplinary techniques, of
which functional brain imaging represents one of the most promising."
It is past time for the termination of Leonard Rosenblum’s 30-plus
years of experimentation, which has contributed so little to our understanding
of human panic and anxiety and yet cost so much—millions of public
dollars, significant numbers of animal lives, and incalculable amounts
of animal suffering. SUNY Health Science Center would do much more to
honor its "commitment to confront the health problems of urban
communities," as expressed in their mission statement, by terminating
Rosenblum’s studies and further directing its resources and its
considerable expertise to current human mental health needs. Then, the
macaque monkeys—infants and their mothers—who have spent so
much of their lives in Rosenblum’s lab in small, desolate cages,
can gain their freedom and touch the ground and see the sun. By affirming
policies that are just, humane, and responsive to human needs, we can
truly promote public health.
What You Can Do
Contact: Dr. John C. LaRosa, President, SUNY Health Science Center,
450 Clarkson Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11203 ; Tel: 718-270-2611; Fax: 718-270-4732,
and John W. Ryan, Chancellor, State University of New York, SUNY Plaza,
Albany, NY 12246; Tel: 518-443-5157. Tell them to end Rosenblum’s
cruel and wasteful experiments and direct the resources of SUNY’s
Health Science Center to services for and research with anxiety disorder
patients. Also contact your federal and (if you are a New York resident)
state representatives and urge them to stop the use of taxpayers’
money for Rosenblum’s and other maternal deprivation studies. Tell
them that such money would be better spent meeting current human needs.
You can read the abstracts to Rosenblum’s studies on-line: visit
MedLine at www.ncbi.nln.nih.gov/pubmed.
Murray Cohen’s extensive critique is available at: www.mrmcmed/mom.html.
Scott Lustig lives in New York City. He is a co-leader with Urban
Action Engine, Inc. of this campaign against psychological experiments
on monkeys at the SUNY Health Science Center in Brooklyn. He works as
a case manager for people with developmental disabilities. Contact:
scotso76@aol.com
or visit www.urbanactionengine.org
for information.
