Baby Monkeys “Pointlessly” Tortured With Your Tax Dollars
The U.S. government has spent decades funding animal exploitation so scientifically useless that even its own researchers admit it should have been shut down. But, instead of doing just that — instead of shutting it down — the National Institutes of Health (NIH) kept the money flowing (to, among other priorities, prevent handing a “public relations victory” to the animal rights movement).
The experiments in question belong to Steven Suomi, a disciple and “star graduate[]” of the infamous Harry Harlow, whose unimaginable barbarity defined a new era of state-sponsored primate torture.
As we previously featured in devastating detail, Harlow spent decades “traumatizing baby monkeys” and their mothers with depraved creations like the “rape rack” and the “pit of despair”, (which Harlow devised and described as representing “a modified form of sadism”).
This is the man who mentored Suomi and for whom Suomi has strongly voiced both his professional and personal admiration. In his Ph.D. dissertation, Suomi wrote that Harlow is a “great psychologist” and, to him, “a great man”.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Suomi followed in Harlow’s footsteps, building a career on psychologically and emotionally brutalizing animals.
Video footage of some of his tamer experiments is now available to view . . . but only for those who can stomach the harrowing sounds of monkeys “shrieking in distress” while at least one “researcher laugh[s]” in the background.
The footage is “troubling”, as even former NIH director Frances Collins wrote in an email, but that did not stop the NIH from funding more of Suomi’s “work”. And neither this nor the broad recognition that Suomi’s work is pointless stopped other animal researchers from publicly celebrating Suomi — even going as far as describing him as “an animal protectionist of the first class”.
Let that sink in.
Publicly, animal researchers protect their own — even when they know, and will privately acknowledge, the truth as we know it.
In records now made public, scientists describe Suomi’s research as: “third rate”, “pointless”, and deserving to be “phased out”. As holding “little scientific value” and “basically doing in macaques what has already been shown in humans”. As utilizing resources that could have gone to “modern techniques on human subjects [that] were more accurate”.
Yet, the NIH continued funding Suomi’s experiments and animal researchers sang Suomi’s praises in public.
Animal researchers have heaped over-the-top praise upon Suomi, claiming that he is not only “brilliant”, but “a step or two above” — that he has “pioneered a new era of investigation” that has achieved “relevance” to many disciplines — and that he is a “best spokesperson from primate science to the child development research community”. (Oh, and, obviously — just to max out on the ludicrosity, that Suomi is someone who cares about “and advocates for practices that benefit animals’ well-being”.)
The sheer absurdity of these claims is further laid bare by Suomi’s own words: even Suomi himself has repeatedly and explicitly conceded the irrelevance of his own research.
Yes, Suomi has repeatedly and explicitly conceded that:
- Nonhuman animals are not “good substitutes for human subjects” and “at best can make only tentative suggestions about human parallels”.
- Much psychiatric research has “not gotten beyond what was already known for humans”, and almost no “findings derived from nonhuman primates [] have clearly advanced knowledge of human development”.
- Nonhuman animals are exploited not because of “any obvious and impressive strengths” but, rather, because of “the problems inherent in conducting research with humans as subjects”.
So, to recap:
- The funding body knows the “science” is bad.
- Scientists know — and admit — that the “science” is bad.
- The scientist himself knows — and admits — that the “science” is bad.
And, yet, the “science” continues.
How? Because science, including animal research, is a business that relies on lying to the public and protecting its own.
And it will keep itself going until we put a stop to it — for, as one critic summed up perfectly:
‘Q: How many monkeys does it take to convince scientists that baby animals are stressed by being taken away from their mothers?
A: As many monkeys as the government will buy for them.’