One year ago: traumatic experiences linked to disease

One year ago I wrote about a study that linked trauma during childhood to increased risk for certain diseases later in life. The study in question was done in humans and I compared that research paradigm with the cruel experiments done on animals to imitate child abuse and neglect.

By comparison, other perhaps less creative and certainly less compassionate people try to create animal "models" of child abuse and neglect by subjecting baby animals to maternal deprivation or by purposefully taking healthy babies and putting them with aggressive adults. If the baby animals used in these terrible experiments survive, they suffer from a range of physical and psychological pathologies, conditions that are rarely acknowledged or treated. The outcome has many similarities to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Studies that explicitly examine post-traumatic symptoms in elephants, chimpanzees and other animals only serve to bolster this claim.

Revisit the original story to read more about the trauma-disease link.

Trauma in early life, disease in later life

Monkey's eye view of freedom

I stumbled across this photo today quite by accident. And I thought, "Look at all of it." You just have to see it.

photo by stig nygaard

A mind that evolved in such and expansive and complex environment is undoubtedly ill-equipped for this:

A word that meant the opposite of expansive couldn't even begin to describe it. Inimical. Cruel.

The long history of primate vivisection

Primate experimentation has a long and ugly history. An interesting short essay in this week's BMJ reminds us of these ancient roots.

Writer Wendy Moore gives us a history lesson in quackery featuring Claudius Galen, a Roman doctor who insisted that bloodletting restored internal balance and health. Moore writes:

"Letting blood at specific points was his favourite remedy for restoring balance; he once denounced a quack for letting blood from the “wrong arm.”

His daily dissections of apes, pigs, and sheep led him to numerous mistaken conclusions on the human body, which remained unchallenged until the 16th century."

And yet science and society remain chained and shackled by the fallacious conclusions of vivisection even today. This despite the fact glaring evidence of its failures:

• 99% of drug candidates fail without making it to human clinical trials


• Of those drugs "proven" safe and effective in animals, 92% (more for cancer meds) fail in human trials.


• Of those drugs that make it through human clinical trials and end up on the market, approximately 40% undergo major relabeling or are eventually withdrawn. This despite the fact that relatively few drugs undergo rigorous post-marketing evaluation.

Monkey madness in new documentary: The Living Weapon

As part of a new documentary called The Living Weapon, PBS has put up several web features. Among these are two declassified films showing primate experiments conducted by the US military.


The first film segment, nearly 10 minutes long, shows experiments where over 100 rhesus monkeys and an unknown number of squirrel monkeys are injected with Botulinum toxin. Even before the experiments begin, the monkeys appear fearful and anxious. After they are poisoned, they become weak, froth at the mouth, gasp for air. Most eventually die because they can no longer breathe.

The other film segment about primates shows an experiment where monkeys are poisoned with enterotoxin, which is a common cause of food poisoning.

"He becomes bewildered and depressed. And, as the intoxication progresses, the animal's depression intensifies leading sometimes to prostration," said the film narrator.

The monkeys appear to be tethered by chains around their necks. Before being sprayed with an aerosolized form of the toxin, the monkeys are put into a restraining box, leaving only their heads free.

The narrator notes that several of the experimenters were made ill during the early portions of the experiment because they breathed toxin from residues in the monkeys' fur. He also noted that some animals were killed by impurities in the substances used to poison the monkeys.


Watch declassified films of primate experiments at The Living Weapon website

Simians and SAM

Seattle Weekly writer John Metcalfe looks at some of the most undesirable neighbors in popular and pricey Belltown. Specifically, the new and highly-anticipated sculpture garden built by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), expected to attract throngs of visitors from all over the world, is juxtaposed with the WaNPRC.

For the UW scientists, whose research focuses on developing AIDs vaccines using monkeys, the unveiling of the city's newest tourist amenity coincides with their own renovation plan. The center is hoping to upgrade to Animal Biosafety Level 3, so that it can infect monkeys with more virulent microorganisms.

The explanation of biosafety level 3 is minimal here, and I doubt many will have a point of reference for either of the agents mentioned in the example. However, the word bioterrorism might pique the interest of some:

The center is now at a biosafety level of "2 plus," according to center director David Anderson. With the kick up to Level 3, the researchers could be infecting animals with pathogens that have a higher risk of human transmission and pack more wallop, such as tularemia or rabbit fever, which is considered a possible bioterrorism agent and can be spread through the air.

I'm sure the folks who pay top dollar for their pricey waterview condos, hip boutiques and martini bars love the new rabbit fever feature.

There are a few quotes from locals in the article, but the author seems more focused on the views of the undesireable neighbors (a stinky meat processing plant is also featured).

" One might think that the invasion of world-renowned sculpture would be inconvenient for an animal- testing facility that tries, through lack of signage, to remain invisible to the general public and animal-rights extremists. (Ecoterrorists set the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture ablaze in 2001, and researchers with the primate center have had protesters show up at their homes.) The park's previous incarnation—by all accounts a fallow, oil-soaked field stalked by perverts and reprobates—was perhaps an ideal neighbor.

But Anderson isn't perturbed by the encroaching international art spotlight and influx of tourists. "We have a very secure building," he says. "With the way some of the animal activists have approached this, we keep a tight lid on it."

I wonder if the "perverts and reprobates" appreciated having vivisectors next door?

Check out the full article in the Seattle Weekly.

Get out your spell-checker: altruism, autism and blue devils

Activation of brain region predicts altruism: But what does that brain region have to do with autism? No. That's not a typo. Scientists from Duke have linked the two in their research.

Many biologists have asked how altruism could even evolve given that it requires self interests to be subverted in the interests of others. Kin selection, reciprocal altruism and selfish genes, i.e. green beard effect, were all notions that arose to explain altruism. But Duke researchers looked for insights with a proximate explanation, rather than a functional one. They investigated what happens in the brain during situations where one had to choose between altruistic and non-altruistic responses.

"According to the researchers, the results suggest that altruistic behavior may originate from how people view the world rather than how they act in it."

(Ummmm. Like this trait just suddenly cropped up in Homo sapiens See my prior posts on empathy and primate fairness for more)

" 'We believe that the ability to perceive other people's actions as meaningful is critical for altruism,' Tankersley said.

The scientists suggest that studying the brain systems that allow people to see the world as a series of meaningful interactions may ultimately help further understanding of disorders, such as autism or antisocial behavior, that are characterized by deficits in interpersonal interactions.

The researchers are now exploring ways to study the development of this brain region early in life, Tankersley said, adding that such information may help determine how the tendencies toward altruism are established. "

Compare this most recent study to those of another team at Duke who claims to study altruism autism by experimenting on primates. In short, monkeys in full-body restraint would fore go a sip of flavored juice to look at photos of fertile female monkeys or socially dominant monkeys. (perhaps they are just desperate for companionship?) When the results of this study were first released, the popular media drew some analogies to porn, gossip magazines or interest in celebrities. The investigators, however, claimed it provided important insights into autism.

While I acknowledge that low-ranking individuals are wise to keep an eye on those with higher-rank, and males are wise to keep an eye on fertile females (evolutionarily speaking), I find the whole thing dubious.

1. Field primatologists have known for decades that monkeys prefer high-ranking group members – without ever keeping thirsty monkeys in cages. In fact, the social preference for or avoidance of an individual is part of how scientists assess status in monkey groups to begin with. What was the question again? Are popular monkeys preferred over unpopular ones? Who's on first?


2. Does any evolutionary biologist doubt that males take risks or accept costs for access to fertile females? Sexual selection or intrasexual competition ring a bell with anyone here? Would any person doubt this based on his or her own experience or plain old common sense?

My point here is that while noninvasive studies in human subjects are underway, primates are suffering in the lab - for naught. It's criminal.

Help wanted: No immune experience required

From the news release:

"Around 50% of adult human T cells are memory cells, having been activated by infections and illnesses during the course of a person's life. However, animal models, such as those used to test TGN1412 before tests were carried out on humans, do not have many memory T cells because they are deliberately kept in a sterile environment where they are shielded from infections."

Hmmm. Presumably all the specific pathogen free (SPF) colonies are part of a plan to eliminate pesky diseases that vivisectors view as confounding variables. Oh. You mean immune systems don't exist in a vacuum? And that species differences and experience influence immune function? Well go figure. (shucks)

"The research, by scientists from Imperial College London, King's College London, and the Babraham Institute, is presented today at the Club de la Transplantation conference in Cernay la Ville, near Paris.

Dr Federica Marelli-Berg, lead author of the research from the Department of Immunology at Imperial College London, explained: "The drug TGN1412 appeared to be relatively safe when it was tested in animal models. However, when the drug was tested on human volunteers, some experienced very severe side-effects."

I'm sorry. Did she say that some volunteers had very severe side effects? How would anyone in her right mind not admit that all six men suffered extraordinary, indeed life-threatening, effects?

"TGN1412 was developed to treat chronic inflammatory conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, leukaemia and multiple sclerosis, which are caused by the body's immune system attacking itself. It was thought that by targeting CD28, the drug could over-stimulate the rogue T cells, making them burn out and die."

Doh!

Not everyone is so quick to buy this spiel. One expert consulted by the science journal Nature had a very different view:

As part of a report into how to minimize the risks of future clinical trials, immunologist Stephen Inglis of the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in London developed a new test, using human cells in a test tube, that could have spotted the risk of a cytokine storm (see 'New test could weed out dangerous drug trials').

Inglis also doubts that Marelli-Berg's theory represents the whole story. Monkey cells did not respond to his test in the same way, suggesting that there is something fundamentally different about the two species' cells, rather than simply a question of which cells are present.

What's more, he says it is unclear whether or not lab monkeys do indeed have less-developed immune systems. "They're not like mice," he says. "Colonies of monkeys live in groups, they're not in individual cages, they do get infections and they're not pristine. We would now recommend using human cells for preclinical trials. But whether that is the cause is a different thing."

Maybe monkeys used in preclinical trials conducted in European labs live in groups. Those here in the US certainly do not.
Other posts on TGN1412 can be found in the pharma category at right.

Original news item: Researchers propose reason for severe side-effects of Northwick Park clinical trial

The brain, risk and taxpayers' dollars

Researchers using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to look at the decision making process in "risky" situations have found that people are generally risk averse, but there are situations that make risk more tolerable.

I'd say these patterns were generally evident from simple observation of human behavior, but the brain activity associated with these behaviors is better understood through the imaging techniques. fMRI studies with human subject make primate experiments that test "economic" or "risk tolerance" behaviors look redundant and wasteful.

Of course, the experiments are also inexorably cruel.

Such experiments, take this one for example, usually entail the exchange of some liquid or food treat for some behavioral task. Sometimes the food or water is reward for doing behavior X. In other cases, food/drink is purportedly a way to measure preference or how an animal values some thing. The primates are food / water deprived to ensure that they "work" during the experiments.

Normally, experimental measurements are taken while primates are in full body restraint (primate chair) with the head bolted into a stationary position so that electrodes can be implanted into the brain. (Hmm - measuring preference in the absence of free will, in the context of a lifelong history of trauma with an n of ??? Who thought of that one?)

Many field primatologists look at preference in wild primates. Some also try to measure costs or benefits of various behaviors, either in terms of resources like food or in the "currency" of evolutionary success. Obviously, such studies don't involve capture or invasive procedures.

fMRI has been used in some captive primate experiments. fMRI replaces some of the most risky and invasive parts of the experiments (surgeries, electrodes, etc). The real point here is that it is possible to do the experiments in human beings.

You can check out the full article on the UCLA study here: UCLA: How does your brain respond when you think about gambling or taking risks?

(PostScript: It's unusual to think of the responses of the brain and not the whole organism. The former could not "respond" without the latter.)

Breaking News: 'Monkey Business' Ends At UConn Health Center

The Daily Campus - 'Monkey Business' Ends At UConn Health Center:

Good news from CT today:

The controversial research on non-human primates at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) has been stopped.

The research, which involved implanting coils into the eyes of rhesus macaque monkeys and drilling a hole into their heads, has been the subject of many protests, led in large part by UConn graduate student Justin Goodman.

According to documents from the USDA and the UCHC Animal Care Committee, the USDA made an inspection of the research facility on Aug. 29. Two days later on Aug. 31, Dr. David Waitzman, who was in charge of the research, voluntarily stopped his experiments. Then, on Sept. 6, UConn's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee revoked Waitzman's ability to continue the research.

The committee's decision came more than four months after UConn President Philip Austin said in a May 2 letter to the university community that UConn has 'dealt successfully with problems related to research animal care.'

According to Goodman, the USDA has now launched a formal investigation into the research, which can result in a formal charge with the Secretary of Agriculture as well as fines for the UCHC."

Trauma early in life, disease later in life

A new study published this week reported a definitive link between early life trauma, i.e. child abandonment, abuse and neglect, and disease later in life. It wasn't the injuries from beating that were to blame. Authors indicated that it all boiled down to psychological stress, because, as the lead investigator put it, "...stress is the fear of pain."

While I might argue some subtleties of the last statement, the link between early psychological trauma and later health outcomes was very convincing.

Investigators found that adults who reported being abused or neglected as children had higher levels of an inflammation protein in their blood than did folks who had no such history.

To make matters worse, the research team indicated there were also implications for cortisol, a hormone that normally acts as a brake on inflammation. The result was high risk for conditions like heart disease and diabetes.

This is a case where investigators learned something about early life experience and health and welfare in adulthood through careful, longitudinal study of humans. Real people living real lives complete with all their confounding variables and covariates, are the best and only way to look at complex psychobiological issues like early life trauma. The new study is really quite impressive. One reviewer noted, "They have elegantly connected childhood stress to a real adult risk of disease." (See NewScientist below)

By comparison, other perhaps less creative and certainly less compassionate people try to create animal "models" of child abuse and neglect by subjecting baby animals to maternal deprivation or by purposefully taking healthy babies and putting them with aggressive adults. If the baby animals used in these terrible experiments survive, they suffer from a range of physical and psychological pathologies, conditions that are rarely acknowledged or treated. The outcome has many similarities to post-traumatic stress disorder.

People who run such animal experiments are unable to draw powerful conclusions or to translate their findings directly into clinical practice. Rather, animal experiments cause untold suffering for the animals, waste tax dollars on fruitless research, and divert resources from programs that could benefit humans and other animals affected by trauma and abuse.

In the end, the abuse and neglect experiments with animals relieve no human suffering and cause extraordinary animal suffering, making the entire endeavor morally bankrupt.

Link to abstract in PNAS here.

Other news coverage of the study:

BBC: Child abuse link to future health

NewScientist: Why childhood trauma brings ill health later on

Pitt's cloned monkey embryos are abnormal - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Monkey embryos at Pitt are abnormal, but apparently scientific fraud is not. Pitt's strategy for dealing with the fraud? Clamming up. Charming way to instill confidence.

The stem cell line has twice the number of normal chromosomes...the work was "very publishable" though fraudulent. One or the other, people. Really.

From the article:

Results of the prior experiments, conducted in 2005, never made it to the hands of independent scientists, but Dahlberg called them "very publishable."

Park, who left Pitt in February 2006 to return to his native South Korea, has had eight stem cell papers retracted by leading scientific journals.


They include a fraudulent 2005 Science paper co-written by Schatten that claimed to have derived stem cells from cloned human embryos.

Since that fraud was uncovered last winter, Schatten, who heads the Pittsburgh Development Center at the Magee-Womens Research Institute, has refused to comment publicly.

Pitt's cloned monkey embryos are abnormal - Full article available here

JAMA article cautions on reliability and utility of animal testing

The predictive value of animal studies has been questioned yet again by a new, independent study that found only one in ten successful animal trials might lead to an approved drug for humans.

Researchers from the University of Toronto reviewed 76 prestigious animal studies, each originally published in such journals as Science and cited by at least 500 other papers, to see if any had resulted in a human trial of the treatment in question. Despite all the animal studies being positive (that is, the treatment was effective) only 8 of the studies resulted in approved drugs for humans – that’s a mere 11%.

Despite the prestigious journals in which they originally appeared, more than half of the 76 highly-cited animal studies used methods and design that rated poor or low. Quality of the design, however, didn't appear to affect the main outcome: studies with "good" methods were no more likely to be replicated in human studies.

The authors of the new study warned that even the very limited success rate of 11% was likely to be an overestimate because they examined only highly-cited studies featured in very prominent journals. They went on to conclude that,

“...patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the findings of prominent animal research to the care of human disease”.

The reference for the study is: Hackman, D.G. and Redelmeier, D.A. 2006. Translation of research evidence from animals to humans. Journal of the American Medical Association 296, 1731-2.

From ECEAE newsletter "Testing Times" November issue

Trim5, then siglecs, now LEDGF (p75)

The repeated failure of HIV vaccines in humans after they have proven effective in other primates provides ample evidence that the nonhuman primate model is itself a tragic and miserable failure in vaccine development. Yet the animal trials continue while all the world holds its breath waiting for vaccines and cures as the death toll rises.

Why have these vaccines failed in humans? One team suggested that differences between monkeys and humans for the gene TRIM5-alpha played an important role. A few months later, we learned about critical differences between nonhuman primates and humans with respect to "siglecs," proteins which serve as the "brakes" on the immune system. And now, just a few short days ago, yet another set of investigators has found another critical difference : HIV uses a specific human protein (LEDGF-p75) to copy itself into the host genome and create an untouchable resevoir of its own genetic code.

Despite all of these differences, and this latest evidence of a human-specific disease mechanism, thousands of monkeys are being tortured and killed right now in government-funded experiments of SIV and SHIV.

ScienceDaily: Mayo Researchers Discover HIV Dependence On A Human Protein

The eyes have it: Part II

Recently, I mentioned some vision experiments that I dubbed "Life through a keyhole," and "The eyes have it: Part 1." Here is another example of a vision experiment performed on monkeys.

Citation: L Kiorpes, C Tang, and JA Movshon (2006) Sensitivity to visual motion in amblyopic macaque monkeys. Vis Neurosci 23(2): 247-56.

Summary of experiment: Nine young male rhesus macaques were used in the experiment. In addition, data from nine others used in an earlier study served as normal controls. For four of the experimental monkeys, a “lazy eye” was induced surgically at ~4 weeks of age. Judging from the detail in the methods section, surgery was performed under ketamine sedation rather than anesthesia and no analgesia was mentioned. The other five monkeys were raised wearing a single defocus lens beginning from ~4 weeks of age and ending before 8 months of age. Operant conditioning for visual tasks was used to measure the perception of motion ranging from very small to larger movements. Tests were done for motion at different speeds, visual distances and levels of contrast. General vision tests (like the ones humans get for glasses) were also performed.

Results: Under some conditions the lazy eye performed better than the “fellow” eye and under other conditions worse. In some cases, performance was roughly equal.

My notes:

• The first author has been publishing articles on monkey vision since at least 1984.


• Many of the papers cited in this article pertain to “lazy eye” and vision in humans. Why bother with a model?


• They mention providing visual and tactile enrichment for the monkeys who they are blinding. Infants and blind animals satisfy the requirements for special consideration under Section 3.81 of the AWA regarding psychological well-being.



• Infants were "obtained" from WaNPRC and hand-reared in the NYU visual neuroscience laboratory.


• Approved by UAWC and conformed to “the Guide.”


• Given the many test conditions in this experiment, and changes that take place as the animal ages and becomes more experienced (with the testing), the lack of independence between each eye in a pair belonging to a single monkey, the statistical analysis is suspect.

Affiliations: New York University Center for Neural Science

Funding Acknowledged: National Eye Institutes EY05864 and EY02017. Additional support was provided by an investigatorship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Also acknowledged RR00166 to the Washington National Primate Research Center.

The eyes have it - Part I

Phototherapy is a common, successful treatment for age-related macular degeneration and other retinal disorders among people. Laser treatment of the affected eye can help patients with such conditions, and the power of the laser treatment and lens employed are calibrated to the unique qualities of each patient’s eye – including axial length. Monkeys naturally have axial lengths shorter than those of people. Despite this, and the fact that there are already human data on this treatment, some still choose to experiment on animals.


Citation: Effect of axial length on laser spot size during photodynamic therapy: an experimental study in monkeys. M Kondo, Y Ito, K Miyata, N Kondo, K Ishikawa, and H Terasaki. Am J Ophthalmol, January 1, 2006; 141(1): 214-5.

Summary of experiment: Authors used some pediatric equipment because of the size of the monkeys' eyes. The authors indicate that they have not treated any patient with an axial length in the range of these monkeys.

“Although we have not performed PDT on patients with very short axial lengths, a reduction of the spot diameter should be considered for such cases.” P. 215

Three monkeys with healthy eyes received the laser treatment. After one week there was an unusually powerful response to the laser, so they cut the eyes out to examine them. Once they figured out how their equations for laser calibration had to be adjusted, they performed the experiment on one additional monkey, cut his eyes out and got the results they expected.

My Notes:

• Procedure tested on these monkeys has already been vetted through a variety of clinical trials in humans.
• Despite existing data on humans treated with phototherapy and their natural variation in axial length, AND the fact that experiments with a model eye have shown that there is an important relationship between axial length and how the eye responds to this specific form of phototherapy, investigators decided to conduct an experiment in monkeys.
• The authors did not indicate whether the animals were killed in addition to having their eyes removed.
• There was very little detail about the methods, as this was a short communication.

Author affiliation:
Department of Ophthalmology, Nagoya University School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

Funding acknowledged: Supported by a Grant-in Aid 16591747 (M.K.) and 16390497 (H.T.) from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan

Bored to distraction

The barren environment of the laboratory is associated with a number of physical and psychological pathologies among animals used in laboratory experiments. New Scientist recently reported on a lethal experiment ("Bored monkeys make for stupid monkeys" 11/19/05) demonstrated how "standard" and "enriched" environments affected adult monkeys' brains. I think that "bored" is, at best, an understatement for what these animals experienced, but I suppose word choice is the sort of thing that comes with editorial power.

I simply had to respond to the fact that the ethical implications of such experiments were sidestepped in an opinion piece printed in the most recent issue: Bored to distraction.

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

Sad Simians (Depressed to Death)

We've all heard the cliche about dying from a broken heart. For some monkeys, it's not a cliche at all. It's the result of a lifetime of suffering in captivity - isolated from friends and family and surrounded by individuals who are enemies who cause fear, pain distress and suffering. Others don't appear to care one way or the other. Some of those individuals are other monkeys - and some of them are the humans involved in the experiments.


Citation:
Shively, C. A., Register, T. C., Friedman, D. P., Morgan,T. M., Thompson,J., and Lanier, T. (2005). Social stress-associated depression in adult female cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis). Biol Psychol 69:67-84.

Summary of experiment:
Female monkeys were put into unnatural social groups intended to induce extreme depression in some animals. The social stress was devastating.

"Over the course of the experiment, 56% of the monkeys in the highest quartile of depression died (5/9), whereas there were only one (11%) or two (22%) deaths in each of the other quartiles. Thus, behavioral depression was associated with increased mortality..."

*Only one or two deaths*? In a setting where proper nutrition is supposedly provided, there are no predators or natural disasters, and veterinary care is readily available, what could the mortality rate be? Apparently there are some very serious risks for morbidity and mortality in this lab.


Institutional affiliations:
Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Funded by:
National Institute of Mental Health
National Institute of General Medical Sciences
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation