9 Brain ‘Studies’ Proving Experimenters Need their brains Tested

4. Monkey Brain Experiments at Johns Hopkins University
The victims: Rhesus monkeys in laboratories have been observed starving themselves rather than subjecting their friends to electrocution. In nature, some monkeys place sticks on the ground to indicate to others which trail to follow. Many monkeys go insane inside laboratory cages, exhibiting behavior such as rocking back and forth, pacing endlessly, and making involuntary, spastic movements. They will even self-mutilate, including by tearing their hair out or biting their own flesh.
The experiment: Experimenters at JHU also cut into monkeys’ skulls, covered their brains with a metal plate, and then made two rhesus monkeys use a computer game in which they “gambled” for “drops of juice.” (It’s common for experimenters to restrict animals’ fluid intake in order to coerce them to cooperate.) They then pumped freezing methanol into the metal plate covering their brains. JHU’s violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) include isolating highly social monkeys in barren cages as well as causing a number of horrific, accidental deaths.

The excuse: This test supposedly could lead to better treatments for humans who exhibit destructive, risky types of behavior. Experimenters found that the monkeys were more likely to choose a “bet” that was high risk but could pay off with more juice, rather than one that was a sure thing. Bravo, JHU. You found a way to torture animals for what could have been easily “discovered” by employing willing human volunteers in non-invasive studies.
What’s more, in response to its campus shutdown because of COVID-19, the university ordered its experimenters to identify “critical animals to be maintained,” presumably leading to the mass killing of countless others who aren’t considered “critical”—which makes us wonder why they were being experimented on in the first place if not even JHU finds these experiments necessary.
5. Monkey, Mice, and Rat Brain Experiments at the University of California–San Francisco
The victims: Male mice woo their mates with high-pitched love songs, and infant rats giggle when they’re tickled. Not only do rats express empathy when someone they know is in distress, they have also been observed preventing other rats from suffering, even when they didn’t know each other and would have to share food.
At the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF), experimenters didn’t provide mice and rats with pain relief before cutting into their skulls. The school’s animal experimenters were also cited for poor monitoring of eight voles, a type of rodent, in a degenerative brain disease study. They were supposed to record signs of disease before euthanizing the animals “at the earliest point possible.” However, no one monitored the infected voles over a weekend. Three of them died of brain disease without yielding any data for the study, and all may have suffered from “discomfort, distress and pain,” federal inspectors said.