Comm Arts II: Among the many experiments described in Animal Liberation, perhaps the most grotesque is the one that involved “transplanting the heads of monkeys and keeping these monkey heads alive in fluid after they had been totally detached from their bodies.” The goal of the researcher, Robert J. White, was “‘to offer a living laboratory tool’ for research on the brain” (75). Do you think this kind of research can be justified, or is it simply beyond the pale? If you think it can be justified, on what grounds? If you think it’s beyond the pale, what do you think it says about our culture that it permits such things? (If you’d like to see video taken during the original experiments, click here.)
Wednesday, January 21
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
After watching the movie, I feel that this test is beyond the pale at this moment. The only justification I can see for a surgery like this in humans is if the body is damaged but the head and brain and fine, such as having a tumor in the body. Although I still believe it is beyond the pale right now becuase if people are still gonna be paralyzed from the neck down, what human would want to do this surgery? After thinking about this, why commit a monkey's life to a useless experiment like this when humans don't have the technology to even make the surgery a full success at this time?
This experiment is simply beyond the pale. If we are going to try to transplant people's heads onto other people's bodies then we could find better alternatives than this for people who are paralyzed. Stem cell research is a better and in my opinion better alternative than this. They have better ways of learning about the brain than this that does not cause unwanted suffering.
I think it was a good idea at first, if the surgery did work it would be a break through. however haveing a body that is useless to the head on it, is not relly what anyone wants. I agree with trying this surgery out, but just leave it alone after you have found out it doesnt work.
JKAL
Even though the surgery didn’t work I still think it was beneficial. I do think they should have tried to save both monkeys though. This idea should be further explored and it could be an alternate choice for people who have cancer and can’t just get the cancerous part cut out. The problem would be finding a body to transplant that head on. I think we should keep bodies that just died alive so that we can use those to transplant on. Somehow we will find a way to do it. Say if someone died from head trauma injuries and the ambulance gets there on time and there is no way to revive that person and when that person was alive they said that they could use their body for that kind of transplant, then they can take the body, at least keep the blood flowing, take it to a facility and then hook them up to a blood machine to be ready for surgery and preserved. It would take years to find out how to make it a successful process but someday it might work.
The experiments on the monkey basically describes the animal crulty and that we should have the same fellings as they do and that is it is morally wrong to do experiments on creatures. It's like the saying that people say that the bible says that animals are for the use of humans but in reality all of it is not. It's cruel because the animal really did not have the saying in the matter. Bottom line is that we should show more care for our animals for they are part of us to.
I have a bias opinion.I feel that purposely inflicting unnecessary pain and torture to any animal or human is wrong.The animal does feel some kind of pain and it is not in control of what becomes of it at the end whether it is crippled for life or whether it has to be euthenized to hinder the effects of the experiments done to it.I also have a lot of medical background and feel that using animals to learn from in science is good to a point. If it is controlled and regulated so there are a small number of these animals being used as long as it is a progressive medical learning tool.How else would we be able to find out about medicines and medical procedures that work and can save lives without some of these tests. artisfun
That's cruel. Although I can see the experiment having benefits far in the future, once we figure out how to fix damage to the spinal cord, at the moment attaching a thinking head stuck to a body paralyzed from the neck down strikes me as morally wrong. All this experiment really proved is that we have the technology to reattach blood vessels- which I think we already knew.
I feel that this experiment could be beneficial in the future if there was a way to reattach all parts needed to function normally again. I think that this is in fact animal cruelty.
I really think that this experiment was just awful and unnecessary. What were they trying to prove? that they can put someone's head with another persons body? I really think that was dumb because they put those monkeys through all that just to leave him paralyzed. I am pretty sure that no human would want to have their head put on another persons body and then be paralyzed. That will never be beneficial for humans so I do not understand why they do it to animals.THEY DO HAVE FEELINGS!!!!!!
Wow!!!! Wat a freakin video.....personally speaking this experiment is not beyond the pale but simple a mile past the pale! I think this experiment is sad and cruel to the monkey. Now don't get me wrong, this experiment was probably pointed towards good meaning and the researchers were just trying to make progress in our medical field but they are forgeting that these are living animals and that they're not just toys or models. They feel pain and fear exactly like we do. They want to keep their lives probably just as much as us humans. And as mentioned in the book, even if it did work on monkeys who's to say we'd hold it accountable to work for humans. Maybe the human might still be alive but what if the human turns to a vegetable or paralyzed or any other sort of brain damage. Like the book says we might have never started using penicillin on humans if it were first tested out on animals because humans react different to certain things as do animals.
I believe that this experiment is pointless and not right. If you continue to do an experiment that has already showed failure then it shouldn't be continued again and again. It's only harming the animal at hand. I agree that there could be alternatives to this kind of procedure. I don't think that society would agree if this experiment was done on humans and scientists were cutting off human heads and transplanting them on working bodies just for the sake of experiment.
OK this experiment was in fact just over the pale. The monkeys were severed at the head, the movie said they were given anestesia but how do we really know? In the video it is clearly said that once nerves are broken they can not be reconstructed. So in this I say that the monkey was not in fact operating "just like a normal monkey" because it could not essentially feel any of its body. To me this experiment was for pure fun only. Since out society allows this type of thing to go on, it only shows that we have no remorse for cruely. If this was to happen to a human instead of a monkey I would be very suprised not to see the government stepping in and calling it inhuamne. So why do it to monkeys? Oh and what happened to monkey b had and monkey a body? yeah...discarded/
Even though they're trying to say its beneficial to try and make this experiment work, i just think its sick and cruel. Simply i think its going just a little too far.
Post a Comment