Squirrel Monkeys Should Think Twice About Long-Term Use of
Cocaine!
Michael J. Kuhar and Leonard L. Howell have had long, lucrative careers at
Emory University addicting monkeys to cocaine. Kuhar and Howell received
over $2 million dollars for their six ongoing studies relating to cocaine
use in nonhuman primates last year alone. This money is coming from
taxpayers just like you and is used to torment monkeys and has never
resulted in any clinical application for people. In Howell�s own words:
"The proposed research will establish a nonhuman primate
model to characterize drug-induced changes in brain neurochemistry during
cocaine self-administration. The proposed use of in vivo microdialysis
techniques in conscious monkeys trained to self-administer cocaine will
characterize neurochemical changes associated with the reinforcing or
addictive properties of cocaine, and will identify neurochemical
mechanisms that mediate drug effects on behavior. Experiments will be
conducted in squirrel monkeys surgically prepared with
chronically-indwelling venous catheters for drug administration.
Stereotaxic procedures will be employed in conjunction with magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) to implant guide cannulae into selected target
areas and to verify the accuracy of probe placement."
In lay terms, primates will be strapped to chairs and
their heads will be fixed to devices that allow experimenters to
manipulate the animal while they are fully conscious. Tubes (cannulae)
will be inserted directly into their brain and their brains will be
monitored while they are fully awake.
Yerkes� frequently grabs the attention and hope of the
public and media with their startling ��breakthroughs�� about cocaine use
based on monkey data. Monkey data is not human data and none of their work
has resulted in any clinical applications. Kuhar and Howell may be
well-known among other primate researchers, but psychotherapists who
actually help people with substance abuse know nothing of their work and
largely consider it a waste of time and money. This is a loss to the
public that prevention programs were not funded and projects to alleviate
poverty and other societal ills that spawn substance abuse were not
implemented. Howell and Kuhar get rich but the public gets no results.
There seems to be no end to the cruelty that can be
devised. There seems to be no end to the cruelty that taxpayers are
required to underwrite. Just as many people slept through the centuries of
African slavery, the Jewish Holocaust, the Cambodian Killing Fields, so
too are Americans now sleeping through a crime of nearly unimaginable
proportions. Day in and day out, animals with mental and emotional
characteristics like those that Howell and Kuhar terrorize are being
strapped into chairs and experimented on while they struggle in vain to
free themselves from what must appear to them to be the very minions of
Hell. Their only escape is when they are finally killed.
And we stand by�.silently. We turn our head. We claim the
�experts� know best. Like they did at Auschwitz and Abu Ghraib. Our
children and grandchildren will ask us what we did during this horrific
animal holocaust. There will be many embarrassed silences.
Visit www.PrimateFreedom.com
or call 770-719-5348 for more info.
Jean Barnes
Primate Freedom Project
www.PrimateFreedom.com
Go on to Country Hoedown
at California Shelter
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