conductedintheUnitedStates.Theseexperimentssubjected
over seven thousand animals to procedures that induced
distress, despair,
anxiety, general psychological devastation, and death. As
someoftheprecedingquotationsshow,researchnowfeeds
off itself. Reite and his colleagues experimented on
chimpanzeesbecauserelativelylittleexperimentalworkhad
been done on thegreat apes, as compared with monkeys.
Theyapparentlyfeltnoneedtoaddressthebasicquestionof
why we should be doing any experiments on maternal
deprivationinanimalsatall.Theydidnoteventrytojustify
theirexperimentsbyclaimingtheywereofbenefittohuman
beings. That we already have extensive observations of
orphanedchimpanzeesinthewildseemsnottohavebeenof
interesttothem.Theirattitudewasplain:thishasbeendone
withanimalsofonespecies,butnotwithanimalsofanother,
solet’sdo itto them.The sameattituderecurs constantly
throughout thepsychological and behavioral sciences. The
mostamazingpartofthestoryisthattaxpayershavepaidfor
allthisresearch—tothetuneofover$58millionformaternal
deprivationresearchalone.^18 Inthisrespect,butnotonlyin
thisrespect,animalexperimentationincivilianlifeisnotso
different from military experimentation.
The practiceof experimenting on nonhuman animals as it
existstodaythroughouttheworldrevealstheconsequencesof
speciesism.Manyexperimentsinflictseverepainwithoutthe
remotestprospectofsignificantbenefitsforhumanbeingsor
any other animals. Such experiments are not isolated
instances, but part of a major industry. In Britain, where
experimentersarerequiredtoreportthenumberof“scientific
procedures” performed on animals, official government
figures show that 3.5 million scientific procedures were