Medical Research -
The Story of Malish the Tormented Macaque
A Shooting Ourselves in the Foot: The Sanitizing of Violence in Our Society Article from All-Creatures.org
Throughout the ages, we have accepted killing, violence, and violent behavior as just being a part of life -
it's time we change!
By: Frank L. Hoffman
If Mary had not worked in medical research while we were in
college, perhaps we may have doubted some of the horror stories we encountered
later, such as this one concerning Malish, a macaque monkey. Mary left
medical research because, as she perceived it from personal experience, it was
nothing but sanitized sadism, producing little or no meaningful results.
It was simply a way of funding for the professors. The following
news report and photos are further confirmation that medical research has not
changed in the forty-two years since Mary left medical research work.
Sunday, November 18th, 2001
By Tamar Nahari, Walla News Service (translated from Hebrew)
A primate experiment conducted at the Hebrew University laboratories in
Jerusalem, which was documented undercover, exposes some horrific pictures
to watch: in the course of the experiment, electrodes are inserted into a
monkey's brain while he is in full consciousness.
The footage was exposed today in the national television news program "Five with
Oshrat Kotler" on Channel 2. The experiment exposed took place several
months ago, and its documentation with a hidden camera is considered to be
one of the only full documentations of similar experiments around the world.
In the footage, the researchers are seen as they are sawing the monkey's skull
and inserting electrodes into the brain, for the purpose of conducting an
experiment testing the memory activity in the brain. During this surgery,
the monkey is conscious and blinking his eyes, while his head is locked into
a restraining device. After the surgery the monkey was transferred into a
cramped cage where he lived for several months, during which he was deprived
of drinking water. In order to drink, the monkey had to prove his visual
memory capabilities in various experiments conducted in the months following the surgery.
The monkey seen in the footage is called "Malish". Malish is a two year old
long-tail macaque monkey and was raised in the Mazor (BFC) primate breeding
farm in Israel, which exports monkeys for experiments. During the
experiment, one of the researchers was recorded talking about the experiment
and saying that "we did all kinds of nonsense, simply so we can do
something", while explaining that the experiment was actually not documented
properly because of a failure in the laboratories' data base system.
Our thanks to
Allied Effort to Save Other Primates (Aesop - Project) for the news
release and photos.
The researcher's comment, "we did all kinds of nonsense, simply so we
can do something" is the exact impression that Mary had of experimentation on
other animals during her years in research. This is not only an Israeli
problem, this is a world-wide problem of waste and suffering.
The medical community has known for years that diet and lifestyle
account for more than 90% of all chronic disease problems, which means that they
are preventable. We learned this from human beings, and not through animal
torment. Animal experimentation, for the most part, does not seek to
prevent disease, but only "seeks" to find ways to treat those preventable
illnesses so that people can continue to live in their decadence. Why is
this the case? Because there is no money in prevention! There is
money to be made only in treating our diseases. Thus, we believe,
that most medical research is doing violence to humans, too.
As we harden our hearts to do violence to animals, we also do violence
to people. In essence, we are shooting ourselves in the foot by
sanitizing violence in our society. We strongly believe that until we stop
doing violence to animals, we will never have true peace or good health.
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