The silver spring monkeys case
In 1981 Alex Pacheco picked the laboratory called the Institute of Behavioral Research (IBR) in Maryland to become an undercover investigator for PETA. IBR was less than three miles away from The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest financier in the world for experimentation on animals. Edward Taub was in charge of the experiments on seventeen macaque monkeys at IBR. Twelve of the sixteen monkeys had disabled limbs caused by surgical deafferentation, which is the destruction of the afferent connections of nerve cells. It was performed to demonstrate the rehabilitation of impaired limbs. It was later known that thirty-nine fingers had been torn or bitten off of the deafferented hands of the monkeys.
Alex Pacheco was authorized by Taub to perform an operation called a ‘displacement experiment’ after just one week of working at the laboratory. This was when Pacheco had to take two monkeys and deprive them of food for three days then feed them raisins. He had to starve them again for three days and only show them the raisins and record their frustration. Later he was put in charge of another experiment called the ‘acute noxious stimuli test;’ which was where the monkey was to be strapped into a homemade immobilizing chair and using surgical pliers clasped to parts of the animal, Pacheco was to observe which parts of the monkey felt pain.
Pacheco called in expert witnesses so that they could help him in his case against Tuab. The witnesses were; Dr. Geza Teleki, Dr. Michael Fox, Dr. Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John McArdle, and Donald Barnes. Alex Pacheco and his five witnesses went to the Silver Spring, Maryland police on 8 September. Sergeant Rick Swain searched the laboratory with a warrant to seize the monkeys from Circuit Court Judge John McAuliffe. This raid on 11 September was the first in the United States where Swain took both the monkeys and the files.
Taub was charged with seventeen counts of cruelty to animals. Judge Cahoon ordered the monkeys to be sent back to IBR after they had already been sent to a fellow activist’s home. In the first trial Taub was left with only six charges for not giving proper veterinary care to the monkeys and in the second trial PETA could only use evidence from the six monkeys that were said to be neglected in their care. This crippled PETA’s case against Taub, rendering them unable to save the monkeys. The jury found him guilty of one count and yet Taub succeeded at appealing it also. The Maryland Court of Appeals in Baltimore made it to where Tuab did not have to obey the State anti-cruelty laws.
Taub was charged with seventeen counts of cruelty to animals. Judge Cahoon ordered the monkeys to be sent back to IBR after they had already been sent to a fellow activist’s home. In the first trial Taub was left with only six charges for not giving proper veterinary care to the monkeys and in the second trial PETA could only use evidence from the six monkeys that were said to be neglected in their care. This crippled PETA’s case against Taub, rendering them unable to save the monkeys. The jury found him guilty of one count and yet Taub succeeded at appealing it also. The Maryland Court of Appeals in Baltimore made it to where Tuab did not have to obey the State anti-cruelty laws.
In the eyes of alex pacheco
“The animals were kept in the back. As we went through the doors to that section, I had my first indication that something was wrong. The smell was incredible, intensifying as we entered the colony room where the monkeys were kept. I was astonished as I began to comprehend the conditions before me. I saw filth caked on the wires of the cages, feces piled in the bottom piled in the bottom of the cages, urine and rust encrusting every surface. There, amid this rotting stench, sat sixteen crab-eating macaques and one rhesus monkey, their lives limited to metal boxes just 17¾ inches wide. In their desperation to assuage their hunger, they were picking forlornly at scraps and fragments of broken biscuits that had fallen through the wire into the sodden accumulations in the waste collection trays below. The cages had clearly not been cleaned properly for months. There were no dishes to keep the food away from the feces, nothing for the animals to sit on but the jagged wires of the old cages, nothing for them to see but the filthy, feces-splattered walls of that windowless room, only 15ft square.”
“The surgery room had to be seen to be believed. Records, human and monkey, were strewn everywhere, even under the operating table. Soiled, discarded clothes, old shoes and other personal items were scattered about the room. Because of a massive and long-standing rodent problem, rat droppings and urine covered everything, and live and dead cockroaches were in the drawers, on the floor and around the filthy scrub sink.” (Alex Pacheco and Anna Francione in Peter Singer’s book In Defense of Animals)