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Cutting Edge
Exposed: A BUAV investigation into the deliberate infliction of brain damage on marmosets at Cambridge University.
The BUAV’s10-month undercover investigation into primate brain research at Cambridge University takes us right into the heart of the UK's medical research industry. Our investigator secretly recorded the miserable fate of hundreds of marmoset monkeys imprisoned inside small, barren cages for their entire lives and deliberately brain-damaged.
The monkeys were used for a mixture of basic research - curiosity-driven and aimed at simply 'finding out about the brain’, and applied research - trying to develop a marmoset 'model' of human illness such as stroke and Parkinson's disease.
The tests
- In the weeks before brain damage was inflicted, monkeys were trained to perform behavioural and cognitive tasks. After brain surgery, these poor monkeys were then made to repeat the tasks again, to see how far the brain damage had affected their ability to perform them.
- Water deprivation and/or food restrictions were often used to coerce monkeys to obey (depriving them of water for 22 out of every 24 hours, with intermittent respite, for months on end).
- In tests in which monkeys were used as ‘models’ for Parkinson’s Disease, they were shut in tiny Perspex boxes for up to one hour at a time to see how often they would rotate (an effect of the brain damage). They were also given injections of amphetamine or an apomorphine which made them rotate faster or in the opposite direction. The monkeys were often clearly distressed and confused; they could be seen crying out, twisting frantically, retching or desperately trying to escape.
- All the experiments included the deliberate infliction of brain damage by cutting or sucking out parts of the brain or by injecting toxins. A typical surgery involved placing the monkey under anaesthetic, holding the head in a stereotaxic device (which clamps the head firmly at the tongue, eyes and ears), cutting open the scalp, scraping away the muscle layer attached to the skull and then drilling open the skull with an electric saw in order to inflict brain damage. One of the researchers callously described this as 'like taking a lid off'.
- The immediate post-operative effects of the brain surgery could include pain, distress, bleeding from head wounds, fits, vomiting, tremors, swelling and bruising, loss in body temperature, failure to eat and drink, abnormal body movements such as head twisting and body rotation, the loss of use in one arm or the whole side of their body, loss of balance and visual disturbances.
- Long-term effects included physical disabilities, learning and memory impairment, weight loss and lack of self-care. Many monkeys appeared confused with blank expressions on their faces, their bodies uncoordinated. One monkey's confused state was described by a researcher as 'watching the birdies'.
- Remarkably, despite the obvious severity of the procedures these monkeys had endured during their short lives, the Government classified the experiments under the category of causing only 'moderate' suffering.