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jane goodall
Jane Goodall Among 380+ Scientists Demanding End to 'Cruel' Harvard Monkey Experiments
"As long as non-human primates are used in scientific experiments, we are morally obligated to provide them with sufficient social conditions that ensure their emotional wellbeing," one researcher argued.
Feb 08, 2023
Hundreds of scientists, doctors, and academics from around the world—including renowned primatologist Jane Goodall—on Wednesday urged the U.S. National Institutes of Health to review and ultimately end funding for "cruel experiments" on non-human primates at Harvard University.
In a letter led by Harvard Law School's Animal Law & Policy Clinic and the Wild Minds Lab at the University of St. Andrews School of Psychology and Neuroscience in the United Kingdom, 380 signatories urge senior National Institutes of Health officials to "review the protocols and justifications" related to the "funding of unethical experiments on macaque monkeys and other non-human primates taking place at Harvard Medical School."
\u201cBreaking: More than 380 scientists, including Jane Goodall, Ian Redmond and Richard Wrangham, join the Animal Law & Policy Clinic @Harvard_Law and the Wild Minds Lab @univofstandrews in calling on @NIH to stop funding cruel monkey experiments @harvardmed.\n\nhttps://t.co/i89Y1aA4ki\u201d— Harvard Animal Law (@Harvard Animal Law) 1675873266
As the letter details:
An NIH-funded Harvard Medical School lab run by neurobiologist Dr. Margaret S. Livingstone has used infant macaque monkeys to study visual recognition by depriving them of the ability to see faces, either by sewing their eyes shut or by requiring staff to wear welders’ masks around them. In some cases, the lab implants electrode arrays into the monkeys' brains.
By design, these experiments require maternal deprivation—a fact that drew the ire of scientists last fall, when Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published an Inaugural Article by Dr. Livingstone entitled Triggers for Mother Love. The article describes the lab's practice of taking infant macaques from their mothers shortly after birth and attempting to appease the mothers' distress by giving them plush toys as "surrogate infants."
"As a primatologist with decades of experience in the field, I can say with complete confidence that we know that infant primates and their mothers suffer greatly when they are separated. We also know that depriving infants of the ability to see faces will have adverse impacts on their brain and eye development," Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist and primatologist at Harvard, said in a statement.
"Taking infant monkeys from their mothers to use in invasive brain experiments could only be justified by expectations of extraordinarily important benefits for the monkeys themselves, or for humans," he added. "Because that high ethical bar has not been met, I see no legitimate need for any such research."
"These studies fail on both scientific and ethical grounds."
Catherine Hobaiter, the principal investigator at Wild Minds Lab, asserted that "these studies fail on both scientific and ethical grounds."
"The doublethink argument that maternally separated individuals represent appropriate models for conditions such as anxiety, while arguing these methods do not cause significant distress, is fundamentally flawed," she said. "Our fundamental role as scientists is to update, refine, and redefine our understanding of the world around us. Doing so must include not only our theoretical positions, but our ethical responsibility to the animals we have given no choice in becoming our subjects of study."
Gal Badihi, a graduate research student at Wild Minds Lab, argued that "as long as non-human primates are used in scientific experiments, we are morally obligated to provide them with sufficient social conditions that ensure their emotional wellbeing."
"This is not only an ethical requirement," Badihi added, "but essential for research validity and integrity."
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How We Are Treated and the Feedback Loop of Our Dreams
One of the challenges with teaching young people about the problems in the world, and motivating them to work on solving them, is the discouragement (or worse) that so many feel about the possibilities for lasting positive change.
Jun 22, 2021
For two days, I was treated like royalty. I had a young man as my personal assistant who kept offering to carry my backpack and get me anything I wanted. I had a hair and make-up artist by my side. Everywhere I went, I had a bathroom with a sign that indicated it was just for me. And if I was hungry, vegan food was special-ordered at the drop of a hat.
Why was I treated this way?
"Too many endure deprivations in the present and feel despair about the future. Without hope and a sense of agency, why bother learning how to be a solutionary?"
Apple TV+ had selected me to appear on their "Dear..." series, a show profiling iconic figures and the people they've influenced. I was one of four chosen to be on Episode 7, "Dear Jane Goodall." In the series, those influenced by these famous people share letters we'd written to our heroes, in various settings depicting the ways we've manifested what we learned from them. What an honor it was to read my letter to Dr. Jane Goodall and recount how I'd wanted to be like her when I grew up; how I did get to work with animals, including chimpanzees, before realizing it was more important that I work for animals (as well as for environmental sustainability and social justice). And what a privilege it was to speak on the same stage as she when we both keynoted a humane education conference sponsored by our respective organizations.
I've been on TV shows before, but never on this scale, and never over two days of taping in multiple locations. At first, I resisted the pampering. I didn't want my assistant to carry my backpack, or the make-up artist to touch up my hair every few minutes. I certainly didn't need a private bathroom, nor to eat before everyone else. When my assistant and I got to a new set, and he used his headset to announce "the talent" would be arriving momentarily, I didn't know whom he was talking about. I'd never before been referred to as "the talent."
The first day, I was reluctant to order special food and figured I'd just eat whatever I could find that was vegan. Nor did I give my stuff to anyone else to carry. The second day, however, I found myself asking my make-up artist to hold onto my lip balm and beckoning her for my water bottle between takes. I enthusiastically asked my assistant to order me food from a vegetarian restaurant I liked. How quickly I'd adjusted to being treated like a queen. And it had only been 24 hours!
What a wake-up call my two-day experience was. I viscerally discovered how easy it is to become how we're treated. This isn't some great new insight, of course. Dorothy Law Nolte's poem, "Children Learn What They Live," made this point decades ago, and the comedy Trading Places (perhaps my all-time favorite movie) drove home this message by demonstrating its extremes. But experiencing for myself the speed with which my attitudes and expectations could change, even subtly, shocked me.
Since my blog is about helping people become solutionaries, it's time to pivot to a bigger question: What might we learn from such experiences that would be valuable for understanding how to better educate people - especially youth - to be system-changing solutionaries?
One of the challenges with teaching young people about the problems in the world, and motivating them to work on solving them, is the discouragement (or worse) that so many feel about the possibilities for lasting positive change. Too many endure deprivations in the present and feel despair about the future. Without hope and a sense of agency, why bother learning how to be a solutionary?
Students with significant privilege due to their family's status, wealth, education, parental availability, societal expectations and treatment, and other factors, may more easily feel empowered to contribute to a more just, humane, and sustainable society if given the opportunity to learn about issues of injustice and cruelty. In my experience, most such students are able to acknowledge their unearned privileges once they are pointed out. They then often feel compelled to contribute to the creation of more equitable and humane systems.
Students who have borne the brunt of structural forms of oppression and/or poverty, neglect, or violence, however, need to be provided not only with support but with acknowledgement that their negative life experiences are equally undeserved. If they feel disempowered, angry, resentful, depressed, sad, and/or afraid, there's good reason.
Structural forms of oppression, abuse, and injustice are deeply embedded in societies, but many have been transformed over time. It's important that we remind ourselves and young people that positive changes have happened and continue to happen through the work of people committed to building more just and compassionate societies. Knowing that problems have been and can be solved by dedicated people, and that collaboratively solving problems is meaningful and often joy-inducing, is key to sparking a solutionary revolution that will benefit everyone, but especially those suffering most, including nonhuman animals.
Just as we can become entitled by receiving royal treatment and become despairing by enduring cruel or unjust treatment - both of which lead to feedback loops that create ever greater inequities and injustices - we can also become empowered by experiencing the impacts of our efforts to transform systems. Recognizing our capacity to make a difference spurs us to action. Action then leads to positive change. Positive change then leads to hope. Hope may then spur us to more action. That's a beautiful feedback loop.
Last week, Jane Goodall agreed to be interviewed for a mini-documentary on my organization's efforts to educate a solutionary generation. The show will air early next year on PBS TV stations and reach millions of people. The seed Jane planted in me as a child helped lead directly to my work in humane education. That she is going to speak about the importance of such education is not just one of the greatest honors of my life, but also a powerful example that when we inspire others to have agency, they become agents of change. So let's treat each other as people capable of making a positive difference.
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Humanity Must Embark on 'New Relationship With the Natural World,' Says Jane Goodall
The acclaimed conservationist, just awarded the Templeton Prize, says that without hope, "we sink into apathy, do nothing—and that will be the end."
May 21, 2021
Renowned conservationist and primatologist Jane Goodall has stressed the need for humanity to seize the coronavirus pandemic as a turning point to forge "a new relationship with the natural world."
Goodall made the comment in an interview with Agence France-Presse published Friday--a day after she received the Templeton Prize for "her unrelenting effort to connect humanity to a greater purpose" over her 60-year career.
In the interview, 87-year-old Goodall expressed hope the "pandemic has woken people up." Leveling a charge she's made before, Goodall put blame for the outbreak on the world's "disrespect" for nature, citing as one example "very, very cruel intensive factory farms."
As global governments roll out plans for a Covid-19 recovery, she said those who choose to simply go back to "business as usual" must urgently chart a different course.
"We have to have a new mindset for our survival," she said.
Ahead of the award, Goodall also spoke with the Associated Press and addressed the global biodiversity crisis.
"Every time a little species vanishes, it may not seem important," she toldAP. "But the thread is pulled from that tapestry and the picture gets weaker as more threads are pulled, until that tapestry, once so beautiful, is hanging in tatters."
Goodall on Thursday was awarded the Templeton Prize, whose previous winners include Desmond Tutu in 2013, the Dalai Lama in 2012, and Mother Teresa in 1973. It includes a monetary prize of over $1.5 million.
Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation, said in a statement that Goodall's "achievements go beyond the traditional parameters of scientific research to define our perception of what it means to be human."
"Her discoveries have profoundly altered the world's view of animal intelligence and enriched our understanding of humanity in a way that is both humbling and exalting," said Templeton Dill.
In accepting the prize, Goodall reflected on a career that has included "the best days of my life" at the Gombe research station in Tanzania where she conducted groundbreaking research on chimpanzees, as well as the Roots and Shoots program she founded in 1991, which she said "has changed thousands of lives."
Goodall also stressed the importance of hope, saying that without it, "we sink into apathy, do nothing--and that will be the end."
"I have learned more about the two sides of human nature, and I am convinced that there are more good than bad people. There are so many tackling seemingly impossible tasks and succeeding," she said.
"Only when head and heart work in harmony," said Goodall, "can we attain our true human potential."
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