Harlow's Monkey Experiments.

This week in Psychology, ethics was a topic of discussion. Ethics, long story short, are what a psychologist or anyone must follow if they work in science/the medical field. Failure to do so would result in loss of a job, a law suit, and so on. One thing I came across on Tumblr was a post about Harry Harlow, an American Psychologist who happened to study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His main focus was performing experiments of social isolation and maternal separation in Rhesus Monkeys. His aim was to demonstrate how nurture played a role in cognitive development.

Harlow forced the Rhesus Monkeys to pick between a surrogate mother made of cloth or wire. Each was designed to dispense milk. In one experiment, they changed which mother gave out the food, and in both cases, they clung to the cloth mother--regardless of whether or not she gave out food. (Can you blame them? A wire mother?)

After this, he began to keep infant monkeys in barb-wire cages. They could hear, see, and smell the other monkeys but had no way to actually interact with them. Total isolation left the monkeys without any contact from the other monkeys. Harlow observed the monkeys engaging in repetitive circling in their cages, blank stares, and self-mutilation. Some monkeys were left for a few months up to a year in isolation. In extreme cases, monkeys had been left in isolation for up to 15 years. He tried to put them back with monkeys that had been raised normally, but there was little to no success.

Finally, Harlow decided to put monkeys in a dark pit called the Pit of Despair. Baby monkeys were left in there for up to a year after birth. He reported emotional shock, autistic self-clutching, and rocking.

This all somehow links me back to my previous blog post. This is clearly unethical. I don't even think I need to explain how. It's pretty obvious. And the fact that people actually let him do this is sickening. You wouldn't do it to a human, so why do it to an animal? I can only imagine how sad of a sight it would be to see these monkeys after he released them. He claimed that none died during the experiments, however some did die afterward.

Ethics are rules that are there for a reason. Just imagine how the world would be if those rules didn't exist. I can't understand why they're not the same for animals. You can't ask them if they want to do the experiment. You can't pay them or tell them the results. They're sitting there, enduring whatever it is you have for them, suffering. If anyone tried something like this on a human they'd be thrown in jail. So what makes animals so different? Why do the rules of ethics suddenly disappear? There have definitely been cases where people have done unethical experiments. Like the Russian Sleep Experiment. (If that's even real?)

Today they would be punished, as they should be. But every time someone does something unethical to an animal, it's hardly ever a felony. Only a misdemeanor. Part of it stems from the fact that we kill animals for food supply. The argument is that if hitting an animal is abuse then so is killing it to eat it. It just doesn't make sense. People are such cruel creatures, and I think they should get the punishment they deserve.