Baby monkeys only allowed to see world through "keyholes"

Many people have heard of Harry Harlow's infamous maternal deprivation experiments performed more than 50 years ago. Babies were taken from their mothers to live with inanimate substitutes that abused (monster mothers who caused pain) or neglected ("dolls" of sorts that did nothing at all) them to the detriment of their physical and mental health. Imagine, if you can, that on top of this cruel legacy of deprivation, the babies were also subjected to experiments - nearly blinded, poked and prodded. Would you be surprised to know that these were experiments done recently and not in the 50s?


Citation: Smith EL 3rd, Kee CS, Ramamirtham R, Qiao-Grider Y, Hung LF.Peripheral vision can influence eye growth and refractive development in infant monkeys. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2005 Nov;46(11):3965-72.

Summary of the experiment: 15 baby monkeys were taken from their mothers and raised in a lab nursery. The infants were forced to wear helmets with experimental lenses. 12 monkeys had lenses with openings of just 4 (n=6) or 8 mm (n=6), i.e. “keyholes” that would effectively “white out” all peripheral vision. The helmets were put on at 3 weeks of age (that’s when they got out of their incubators) and worn until five months of age.

After the helmets were taken off, a laser was used to damage the center of the retina in one eye of 7 monkeys. All 12 keyhole monkeys had abnormal vision. 9 of 12 keyhole monkeys had extreme vision problems (outside 90th centile). For reasons that the authors could not explain, one became extraordinarily far sighted – the opposite of what is expected. Farsightedness develops when the entire eye is blurred (i.e. when there isn’t even a clear "keyhole").

There were 21 control babies who did not have to wear a helmet or have an eye damaged by a laser, but they were taken from their mothers.

Funding acknowledged in the article: National Eye Institute Grants R01 EY03611, and P30 EY70551, the Vision Cooperative Research Centre Sydney, Australia, the Greeman-Petty Professorship, and the UH Foundation

Since 2000,the National Eye Institutes have paid over 2 million dollars for these cruel experiments.

Institutional Affiliations: All authors claim joint affiliation.

• College of Optometry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas USA
• Vision Cooperative Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia