Primate Maternal Deprivation Experiments

Among the many things that Google sends me alerts for, news about non- human primates seems to generate the greatest number of posts. When I originally set up this news alert, I thought that I'd get periodic conservation stories and occasional feel-good news about chimpanzee retirement. This was not to be because of two interesting and interrelated factors I've learned:

1. Non-human primates are often in the news 
2. Non-human primates are often the center of great controversy

Today's news, brought to us by the website Isthmus, has to do with proposed maternal deprivation experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  If you aren't already up-to-date on non-human primate research history, UW was also the university where psychology Harry Harlow conducted his experiments to measure love and attachment on monkeys in order to evaluate the nature of the maternal bond.  Harlow's research was, and still is, quite controversial.  At its worst, it subjected baby monkeys to extreme psychological damage from which they never recovered.  Harlow's experiments, nonetheless, yielded some important findings; namely, his research showed that the maternal bond between a mother and infant is about more than just a physiological need for food.  Mothers, Harlow discovered, play a crucial role in the psychological and emotional well-being of their young. Today, this sounds like a complete no-brainer [and clearly, Harlow never interviewed actual, you know, mothers], but at the time, this was quite revolutionary thinking.  This research helped to destroy the popular idea that children shouldn't be touched or nurtured, lest they become spoiled and needy, as well as called into question the conventional wisdom that dictated the institutionalization of orphaned children.  Most importantly, Harlow's research indicated that children need families, and specifically, nurturing from the mother, in order to flourish.

Fast forward to today. UW is still in the non-human primate research biz, despite the fact that non-human primates are being retired and the validity of experiments with them and their applications to humans are being called into question.  UW's latest experiment involves, 

"...[the removal of] 20 newborn rhesus monkeys from their mothers, give them anxiety-inducing tests for a year, and kill them along with another 20 infant monkeys used as a control group. The researchers hope to learn more about how trauma and stress early in life affect emotional development in humans -- and how it can be treated."

Killing baby monkeys in the name of science has provoked a strong outcry from the UW community. Several people have also questioned the ethical issues surrounding the intentional creation of depression and anxiety in the animals for the purpose of developing medications to treat these conditions.  The loudest outcry seems to revolve around the issue of taking the monkeys away from their mothers at birth.

So here's my question: if we, as a society, recognize the inherent ethical issues of removing baby monkeys from their mothers, why do we not extend that recognition to human children?  Human children get removed from their mothers at birth all the time as part of the adoption machine and I've yet to hear an equal outcry.  If we can recognize the psychological dangers and potential damages to breaking the maternal bond in animals, why do we refuse to consider that removing baby children from their mothers at birth creates trauma and ruptures the maternal bond that's important for normal psychological development?  Instead of raising ethical issues, society assumes that children removed from their natural families and placed with strangers should be full of joy and gratitude and grow up like their peers raised with their natural families.

Here's some news: getting a new family doesn't make the trauma and loss of the original somehow easier to cope with.  Remember the monkey experiments?  Removing babies from their mothers at the moment of birth [or any time, really] causes psychological harm.  If we can recognize the ethical issues and potential for psychological problems in non-human primates as a result of removing baby monkeys from their mothers, we should be able to draw similar conclusions about doing the same to human children.

End.