According to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures,
about sixty thousand monkeys and apes are used in research each year
in the U.S., and indications ore that this number is likely to grow profoundly over the next decade....

A Brief History of Primate Research

In the early 1950s, behavioral and biomedical research on monkeys and apes was less industrialized than it is today. Some scientists did use primates in a variety of horrific ways, but these were generally small scale endeavors. The people performing the experiments had little knowledge of or opportunity to learn about the normal behavior and mental sophistication of their victims.

By the late 1950’s things began to change. The wild rhesus macaque populationin India was reduced from an estimated five to ten million animals so less than two hundred thousand. This decimation was primarily a result of research on polio. but many thousands of monkeys were secretly killed by the U.S.in experiments by military researchers. India banned all exports of monkeys when they learned that some were being killed in U.S.nuclear weapons studies. In 1963 the world view that endorsed research on primates suffered a devastating blow.

Jane Goodall, a young English naturalist, reported that humans were not the only primate species to make and use tools. She had learned that chimpanzees did as well. Today we take this for granted, but in 1965 this news shocked the world. The distinctive hallmark of humanity had vanished.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Harry Harlow, a University of Wisconsin psychologist, reported that infant monkeys went insane when deprived of maternal contact. Today we sake this for granted as well, but in 1963 the notion that young monkeys and young humans would suffer similar trauma in similar situations was a surprise that offered researchers unlimited possibilities.These two events mark a split in American ethics and morality that remains and grows wider by the moment.

On the one hand, Goodall’s report triggered a rush of
observers into the African bush to determine whether her descriptions were accurate. A flock of observers have been watching wild chimpanzees continuously now for 35 years. What they have discovered is an incipient culture replete with dialectical languages, knowledge of medicinal plants, tool manufacture and use, politics, and warfare, The most staggering discovery, one repeated at many chimpanzee study locations, in that these behaviors and abilities are traditions; that is, they are passed from one generation to the next through teaching and learning in much the same way similar behaviors are passed along to succeeding human generations.

Harlow’s report also triggered a rush of researchers to repeat and expand on his work to determine whether his descriptions were accurate. An army of researchers have shown
that infant primates can he emotionally crippled and even killed by prolonged isolation. The understanding that other primates are so similar to humans has in turn led so the use of monkeys and apes in experiments on drug addiction, psychological stress, mental illness, and fear.

Contradictions Persist and Grow Today

Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center (Emory University) in Atlanta exemplifies these contradictions in American studies of our near kin. Yerkes is one of seven regional centers devoted to research on primates and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The schizophrenic nature of our attitudes becomes obvious when the research of two Yerkes scientists, Francis Novembre and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, is compared. Novembre and Savage-Rumbaugh agree that chimpanzees are very similar to humans, but to one this means they should become human surrogates for fatal biomedical experimentation, while so the other it means we should try to learn to communicate with this alien race.

Novembre studies human immuno-viruses (HIV) and simian immuno-viruses (STV, a disease of monkeys). He has proven,
though unintentionally and along with other researchers, that HIV and the many SIVs are so different that what is learned about our is of little value when trying to treat another. November injected HIV into young chimpanzees at Yerkes. Once infected they were doomed to live a life in isolation, seeing only one or two chimpanzees in nearby cages, and seeing humans covered with masks, goggles, and overalls. Based on what we know about the similarities in emotion and cognition between humans and chimpanzees, this is akin to taking pre-school children from their families, infecting them with disease, and then keeping them alone in small prison cells.

Savage-Rumbaugh studies the language abilities of chimpanzees and bonobos (close cousins to chimpanzees). She has discovered that these apes and humans learn human language in precisely the same way. Just as a human child seems to spontaneously learn to communicate with words, so too will a young ape learn to communicate in symbols. In both cases the only requirement is so be around others who are using these modes of communication. In fact, apes learn to under-
stand spoken human words, and it is only a small difference in their larynx that keeps them from speaking. SavageRumbaugh has shown that, if given the opportunity, apes will readily communicate with symbols, just as language-impaired human children do.

At the same time that Savage-Rumbaugh is demonstrating that young apes are at least as bright as young humans, that they engage in imaginary play, that they will lie to adults, that they seem to consider what is going on in the
mind of another, Novembre is studying the results of infecting them with HIV.

Rachel Weiss, a young woman who cared for Jerom, the only chimpanzee who has thus far died from HIV, commented that Novembre never visited the animals he infected. The dirty work was always done by another. Weiss has written eloquently about Jerom’s slow, painful death in a concrete cell at Emory University, alone but for her, How is it that so many of those who know primates in any intimate sense see them as deserving of basic fundamental rights, while the government continues to pay people to hurt them)

The NIH Regional Primate Research Centers

In the early 1960s the United States began creating regional research centers for the sole purpose of primate experimentation. Eventually, seven centers were created, which today form the core of primate-based research in the U.S. Each of the centers is associated with a large university, but the centers are federally funded. The overwhelming majority of monkeys used at these inquisition centers are rhesus macaques. It is the curse of rhesus monkeys that they breed readily in reasonably comfortable captive settings.

The seven centers maintain around 17,000 monkeys. As the Tulane Regional Primate Research center (Tulane University), the center with the largest population and breeding program, infants are removed within three days and placed in a “nursery” with other infants and youngsters. Some of these babies are moved directly into research, some are sold to other labs, and the rest will be moved into line for studies using older animals.

Public relations officers at the regional centers work full time assuring the public and she regulators that she animals at their facilities are well cared for and that the research on the monkeys is leading to an endless string of miraculous breakthroughs for human health. A visit to one of the center’s web pages will leave the visitor with the impression that immortality must be right around the corner.

Every primate lab periodically announces that it is “making progress” toward some important goal. If it reported no progress where would the house and boat payments come from) James Parker, the public relations director at the Oregon center, once remarked that he could tell just by looking at the monkeys at the center that they were undeserving of concern and had no real sense of self.

Horrific Conditions for the animals

The primate centers have no real concern for the animals under their control. As the New England Regional Primate Research Center (Harvard University) nearly 200 monkeys require veterinary intervention annually due so self mutilation caused from isolation induced mental illness. These monkeys chew holes in their own arms, chew off their own fingers and nails, and otherwise injure themselves to such a degree that medical care is required.

At the California Regional Primate Research center (University of California-Davis) and as the Washington Regional Primate Research Center (University of Washington) monkeys have died from exposure to the elements and from thirst, Al Gregon, monkeys had so wade through puddles of feces filled mud to reach their food.

At Wisconsin, rhesus monkeys whose lives had been studied carefully for thirty years, whose names were known to visitors to the zoo where they lived, were given to Tulane for use in infectious disease research. This was done in retaliation against one of the scientists who was studying them. She had discovered that they were being secretly removed from the zoo and sold to other labs or killed in the center’s own research, a violation of written assurances: with the county that she zoo monkeys were out of bounds for harmful experimentation. The monkey house was bulldozed to the ground.

The details of the experiments themselves are even more horrific.

Also at Oregon, Martha Neuringer forcibly removes infant rhesus monkeys (among the most social of monkeys) from their mothers on the day they are born and houses them alone in steel cages. The mothers grieve for days over the loss of their babies. The infants suffer stress, terror, and depression manifested in constant rocking and swaying, continued clutching at themselves, and self mutilation.

In crack smoking experiments, Ron Wood (now at the University of Rochester) deprived monkeys of water for up to 21 hours a day, terming this “modest water restriction.” The monkeys searched for water by dipping their tails and hands in urine collection pans under their cages.

At the University of California, Berkeley, Russell De Valois locks monkeys into stereo manic devices. He then cuts open their skulls to expose part of their brains and inserts electrodes for up to 44 hours. To prevent eye movements, the animals are paralyzed. Upon completion of the “research,” the monkeys are killed and their brains dissected.

Ethical Self Justification

What choice do the primate centers have? Is is impossible to inject a virus into a monkey, or insert feces into a newborn's lungs, or sew an eye shut, or inject an individual with PCP amid at the same time pretend so possess a concern for their well-being. The lines are clearly drawn.
The researchers themselves acknowledge that they are engaging in research on beings very similar to humans. Throughout history, during other times of holocaust, those not directly affected have kept their mouths shut. Such silence has amounted to a culpable, tacit approval. Only the brave have spoken out, only the true champions of human dignity and humanity have risked their personal reputation and safety by challenging the power of the state to harm others.

Make no mistake, the United States government will not cease its holocaust of monkeys and apes until citizens make it clear that there are political risks in not doing so. The people who would harm a primate have a mindset similar to those who were willing to experiment on Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and homosexuals in Nazi Germany or low income people of color in this country.

You have a choice: explain to your grandchildren why you kept quiet and allowed the unhampered torture of one sensitive and intelligent near cousins, or speak out now and one day he seen as a hero and champion of humanity's compassion and kindness.