It isn\’t much of an exaggeration to trace the beginning of an effective animal rights movement in the United States to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals\’ investigation of Edward Taub in 1981 which made national headlines for the fledgling group.

    Taub was a researcher at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Springs, Maryland, in 1981 doing experiments with monkeys designed to better understand the mechanism of paralysis. Taub hired a young lab assistant named Alex Pacheco. Pacheco, of course, was a PETA plant. Pacheco waited until Taub was away from his lab for an extended period to call in authorities to raid the lab.

    Taub\’s supporters argued that Pacheco intentionally neglected the animals to make Taub look bad during his absence, while photographs that PETA took of the monkeys in restraining apparatuses are probably the most widely circulated animal rights photographs ever taken.

    At his first trial on animal cruelty charges, Taub was convicted on six chages, but an appeal brought a new trial which resulted in an acquittal on all but one of the charges. That sole conviction, too, was later overturned on appeal.

    Putting aside the debate over how well Taub took care of his monkeys, according to PETA the sort of research Taub was doing is useless. The only reason anyone would ever do those sort of experiments on monkeys would be to keep overpaid research scientists in business if you believe PETA\’s cant.

    Last week, however, it was announced that Taub\’s research at Silver Springs combined with subsequent research on primates has led to the development of a new treatemtn for people affected by stroke-induced paralysis, which afflicts an estimated 4 million people. The whole point of Taub\’s original research was to discover if monkeys suffering from nerve damage could re-learn how to use their limbs. Taub\’s research demonstrated that, in fact, they could be re-trained to use their limbs and the result of that research is now finding its way into treatment of human beings — albeit delayed for years thanks to PETA\’s actions.

    As Taub himself put it in a 1990 letter,

The actions of the antivivisectionists have resulted in withholding the potential benefits of this treatment to a large number of humans whose quality of life has been greatly compromised by their stroke.

    If PETA and the animal rights movement had its way, these new techniques wouldn\’t just be delayed; they\’d never see the light of day at all.

Source:

Monkeys First. Debra J. Saunders. The San Francisco Chronicle, June 25, 2000.

Edward Taub\’s web site: http://www.uab.edu/neurotp/textonly/taub.html