Harvard experimenter Margaret Livingstone—recognized for stitching shut the eyelids of toddler monkeys for as much as a 12 months—has an extended historical past of partaking in reckless animal experimentation, gloats over the gadgets she has usual to torment animals, and, apparently, additionally shares a creepy childhood interest with notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
However you don’t should take our phrase for it: She conveniently lays all of it out herself in an autobiography that she penned for The Historical past of Neuroscience in Autobiography, vol. 9—a sequence that collects the tales of neuroscientists, in their very own phrases.
In it, Livingstone mirthfully describes incidents in her profession during which she went rogue with experiments on animals, puffs up with satisfaction over a tool she constructed herself to torment cats, and casually denigrates entire species of animals in a remarkably unsympathetic and incognizant chronicle of her personal profession.
Livingstone’s 40-year profession is constructed on taking completely wholesome child monkeys away from their loving moms at start and depriving them of regular visible enter by stitching their eyes closed or by altering their sight in different methods. In a few of her experiments, laboratory workers put on welding masks once they’re within the presence of the motherless monkeys. The infants by no means see a face, monkey or human.
Experimenter Margaret Livingstone is tearing child monkeys from their moms, killing them, & dissecting their brains—she’s even SEWN THEIR EYES SHUT.
Be a part of greater than 74,000 animal advocates in urging @Harvard to SHUT DOWN her lab! https://t.co/W1vnWLddAq pic.twitter.com/qaFDN9yHS7
— PETA (@peta) November 16, 2022
That is all nice enjoyable for her, she says. She couldn’t probably adore it extra. So enjoyable.
“I spend plenty of time now taking good care of child monkeys whereas carrying a masks in order that they by no means see any faces, and I can’t think about having extra enjoyable doing the rest,” Livingstone says within the autobiography.
In some experiments, monkeys are disadvantaged of all liquids for hours on finish and an experimenter will dole out mere drops of juice—a “juice reward,” in animal experimenter parlance—for the monkeys’ continued cooperation. Livingstone finds the monkeys’ response “fascinating.”
“They are going to do no matter they should do to get a juice reward, and generally what they do just isn’t precisely what you thought you have been coaching them to do. It’s like elevating youngsters—you want to concentrate on what it’s you might be reinforcing,” she says.
Effectively, it’s not precisely like elevating youngsters, although, is it? Fairly certain there are legal guidelines towards depriving youngsters of liquids as a super-fun habits modification method.
Livingstone, who says all spider monkeys are inherently “neurotic” and troublesome to work with, recalled how as a pupil she had requested an teacher if she might inject some lobsters with a chemical—you recognize, simply to see what would occur. He refused. So she did it anyway—and the lobsters turned “frozen” in “stereotyped postures” for aggression and submission. How a lot did she inject?
“A couple of pinch as I recollect,” she mentioned.
Very scientific certainly, Margaret.
Livingstone at one level in her profession experimented on cats, preserving them awake for hours. To perform this, she designed her personal torture machine utilizing a cardboard drum she discovered at a close-by demolition website. Wistfully and with out a trace of empathy, she then recollects how she and a colleague prevented a cat inside it from sleeping by slowly revolving the drum.
“I additionally do not forget that after we had used this enormous drum to sleep deprive a cat, we took it into the lads’s room to empty it into a bathroom,” she says. “We each ended up with soggy cat excrement throughout our toes.”
Oh, the madcap hijinks of animal torturers. Will the hilarity by no means finish?
In one other experiment, Livingstone recollects that one of many cats didn’t go to sleep. She gave the cat Valium to induce drowsiness—however didn’t notice that the drug has the alternative impact in cats. She laments that she had to stick with the cat for 12 extra hours and determined to go the time studying. She writes, “The experiment was a failure, however the e book was improbable.”
Livingstone’s apparent irony deficiency could also be rooted in her childhood, throughout which, she says, she collected skulls she had discovered and “made skeletons from street kill by soaking the carcasses in lye.” Enjoying with roadkill is a childhood amusement that was additionally loved by serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Livingstone has carried out her obscenely violent experiments on monkeys for 40 years. Since 1998, she has collected $32 million in taxpayer cash from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being to bankroll them. But she has not produced any cures or therapies for people. Harvard should shut down her laboratory.
Please be part of greater than 70,000 PETA supporters by telling Harvard to shut Livingstone’s laboratory.