A PETA investigation has revealed that for decades
a National Institutes of Health laboratory in Maryland has confined hundreds of monkeys
and bred dozens of babies each year to be predisposed to mental illness.
The babies are torn away from their mothers at birth,
tormented for their entire lives in cruel and archaic psychological experiments.
PETA has obtained never-before-seen photographs and video footage taken by NIH staff
that shows just some of these recent and ongoing heartbreaking experiments,
which are designed to cause, worsen, and measure the severe anxiety, fear, and depression
experienced by these traumatized baby monkeys.
In so-called intruder experiments, terrified babies are placed alone in metal cages
and repeatedly threatened by the intimidating presence of masked humans,
from whom they frantically try to escape.
In startle tests infants were restrained inside mesh cages-
cages so small, they can't even stand or crouch-
and then they're deliberately scared by extremely loud noises or bursts of air
that send them into a panic.
In anxiety-inducing experiments, infants were caged with their mothers
The mothers have been heavily sedated and had their nipples taped over
so that they couldn't respond or comfort their frightened babies
when they cried out, clung to, and frantically tried to revive them.
Experimenters laugh when one mother struggles to remain awake to comfort her distraught infant.
In some trials the experimenters released mechanical snakes
into the cages to further terrify the infants,
who naturally fear reptiles.
Some of the babies were given only stiff bottles covered with cloth to cling to
as crude surrogates for their real mothers.
Having never known a day of love in their entire lives,
some sink into depression, attack their own limbs, and rip out their own hair.
Young monkeys are subjected to additional experiments.
They may be forcibly addicted to alcohol in order to worsen their symptoms of depression and anxiety.
After a life of systematically induced terror and trauma many of these monkeys,
who can live into their 30s in the wild,
are killed, often before the age of 8.
As someone who has spent her career documenting primates
rich social and emotional lives, I found it excruciating to watch the video
of NIHs fear and anxiety inducing experiments on vulnerable baby monkeys.
And even worse, to know that behind it are hundreds of hours of additional footage
and other similar experiments still going on.
Taken as a group and without exception, these maternal deprivation experiments are cruel,
plunging infant monkeys into hellish conditions that they can neither control nor escape from.
Both ethically and morally, these experiments have no place in science today.
NIH has conducted these studies for more than three decades.
It recently spent more than $30 million dollars on them.
The experimenters themselves, however,
have acknowledged that these tests are not relevant to humans
and that there are far more effective human-based, genetic, brain-imaging,
and other modern research methods available to study human mental illness instead.
Please, help end NIH's abuse of baby monkeys and their mothers.
Take action at PETA.org
