The recent Harvard experiments have shown that mother monkeys can sometimes find comfort in toys, even if they are separated from their infants. This has caused intense controversy among scientists and reignited debate about the ethics of this practice. Animal welfare.
The paper, “Triggers to mother love”Margaret Livingstone, neuroscientist and author of the article that appeared in The Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences(PNAS), September to little fanfare and media coverage
But once news of the study began spreading on social media, it provoked a firestorm of criticism and eventually a Send a letter PNASMore than 250 scientists have signed the petition for a retraction.
Animal rights groups meanwhile recalled Livingstone’s past work, that included temporarily suturing shut the eyelids of infant monkeys in order to study the impact on their cognition.
”We cannot ask monkeys for consent, but we can stop using, publishing, and in this case actively promoting cruel methods that knowingly cause extreme distress,” SubmittedCatherine Hobaiter is a primatologist from the University of St Andrews who co-authored and edited the retraction letters.
Hobaiter told AFP she was awaiting a response from the journal before further comment, but expected news soon.
Harvard and Livingstone, for their part, have strongly defended the research.
Livingstone’s observations “can help scientists understand maternal bonding in humans and can inform comforting interventions to help women cope with loss in the immediate aftermath of suffering a miscarriage or experiencing a still birth” said Harvard Medical School in a Statement.
Livingstone, in a Separate statement, stated: “I am now a member of the group of scientists demonized and targeted by animal researchers, who seek to eliminate lifesaving research in all mammals.”
Such work routinely attracts the ire of groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which opposes all forms of animal testing.
This controversy has notably provoked strong responses in the scientific community, particularly from animal behavior researchers and primatologists, said Alan McElligot of the City University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Animal Health and a co-signer of the PNAS letter.
He told AFP that Livingstone appears to have replicated research performed by Harry Harlow, a notorious American psychologist, from the mid-20th century.
Harlow’s experiments on maternal deprivation in rhesus macaques were considered groundbreaking, but may have also helped catalyze the early animal liberation movement.
”It just ignored all of the literature that we already have on attachment theory,” added Holly Root-Gutteridge, an animal behavior scientist at the University of Lincoln in Britain.
Harm reduction
McElligot & Root-Gutteridge claim that the case is representative of a larger problem in animal research. In which questionable papers and studies continue to be published in high-impact journals and pass institutional review, McElligot & Root-Gutteridge say the case is emblematic.
McElligot pointed to a much-critiqued 2020 paper extolling the efficiency of foot snares to capture jaguars and cougars for scientific study in Brazil.
More recently, experiments on marmosets that included invasive surgeries have attracted controversy.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst team behind the work says studying the tiny monkeys, which have 10-year-lifespans and experience cognitive decline in their old age, are essential to better understand Alzheimers in people.
Opponents argue results rarely translate across species.
When it comes to testing drugs, there is evidence the tide is turning against animal trials.
In September, the US Senate passed the bipartisan FDA Modernization Act, which would end a requirement that experimental medicines first be tested on animals before any human trials.
The vast majority of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human trials, while new technologies such as tissue cultures, mini organs, and AI models are also reducing the need for live animals.
Opponents also say the vast sums of money that flow from government grants to universities and other institutes – US$15 billion annually, according to watchdog group White Coat Waste – perpetuate a system in which animals are viewed as lab resources.
”The animal experimenters are the rainmaker within the institutions, because they’re bringing in more money,” said primatologist Lisa Engel-Jones, who worked as a lab researcher for three decades but now opposes the practice and is a science advisor for PETA.
”There’s financial incentive to keep doing what you’ve been doing and just look for any way you can to get more papers published, because that means more funding and more job security,” added Emily Trunnel, a neuroscientist who experimented on rodents and also now works for PETA.
Most scientists do not share PETA’s absolutist stance, but instead say they adhere to the “three Rs” framework – refine, replace, and reduce animal use.
On Livingstone’s experiment, Root-Gutteridge said the underlying questions might have been studied on wild macaques who naturally lost their young, and urged neuroscientists to team up with animal behaviorists to find ways to minimize harm.
