At the State University of New York Health Science
Center, infant monkeys are being torn from their mothers. Help put an
end to the shameful, decades-long practice of maternal deprivation
experimentation
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mother, become isolated and withdrawn.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 himselfplk 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
included subjecting monkeys to the same model of unpredictable food
access "perfected" by Rosenblum. At the University of Wisconsin, Gary
Kraemer deprives female infant marmoset 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 Entrez-PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed
Murray Cohen's extensive critique is available at:
Medical Research Modernization Committee
http://www.mrmcmed.org/
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 (website under
construction).
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