Rebecca Santos: Natural Sciences Blog

Monkey Drug Trials (unethical and famous)

This experiment was made with the purpose of understanding the effects of drug use and addiction. Animal experimenting can be very useful for the comprehending of us humans, but this experiment went beyond the the kingdom of ethics. So, the monkey drug trial experiment done in the year 1969(creepy) was completely unethical. In these tests a very big group of rats and monkeys were taught to inject themselves with a variety of drugs, including, alcohol, morphine, cocaine, codeine, and amphetamines. When the rats and monkeys were capable of injecting themselves with the drugs, they were left alone with a big supply with portions of each of the drugs mentioned before. Then, these creatures were so bothered and disturbed, obviously, and some tried hard to get away and they broke their arms in the procedure. Also, the monkeys receiving cocaine experienced convulsions and in some cases tore off their fingers, possible that it was a result for hallucinations the drugs provided. A monkey took amphetamines tore all of the fur from his abdomen and arms, and when the case of morphine and cocaine combined occurred, then death would take place within a period of time of approximately two weeks.