Alex Pacheco (activist) - Silver Spring Monkeys Case

Silver Spring Monkeys Case

The Silver Spring monkeys case began in 1981, when Pacheco took a job as a volunteer inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. Edward Taub, a psychologist, was cutting sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the fingers, hands, arms, and legs of 17 macaque monkeys – a process known as "deafferentation" – so that the monkeys could not feel them. (Some of them had had their entire spinal columns deafferented.) Taub used restraint and electric shock to force the monkeys to use the limbs they could not feel. He discovered that, when motivated by extreme hunger or the desire to avoid electric shock, they could be induced to use their deafferented limbs. The research led in part to the discovery of neuroplasticity within the primate motor system and a new therapy for stroke victims called constraint-induced movement therapy that helped restore the use of affected limbs.

Pacheco reported Taub for violations of animal cruelty laws based on the animals' living conditions. (Norman Doidge has alleged that Pacheco staged some of the photographs that he took, an allegation that has never been proven.) Police raided the lab, seized the monkeys – which they then handed over to PETA, a move that resulted in their temporary disappearance – and charged Taub with 119 counts of animal cruelty and failure to provide adequate veterinary care, the first such charges brought in the United States against a research scientist. 113 charges were dismissed at the first court hearing. Taub was initially convicted on six misdemeanor counts of failure to provide adequate veterinary care. Five convictions were dismissed after a second trial, and the final conviction was overturned on appeal when the court ruled that Maryland's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law did not apply to researchers.

The legal battle for custody of the monkeys, following their removal by PETA, reached the United States Supreme Court. It was the first animal-rights case to do so, though the newly formed PETA ultimately failed in its battle to secure the animals' release. The proceedings, which lasted years, generated a large amount of publicity for PETA, transforming it from what Ingrid Newkirk called "five people in a basement" into a national movement. As a result of the case, the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Science, Research and Technology held hearings that led to the 1985 Animal Welfare Act, and in 1986 changes in United States Public Health Service guidelines for animals used in animal research included a requirement that each institution seeking federal funding have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee whose job it is to oversee how laboratory animals within that institution are cared for. The Peace Abbey, of Sherborn, MA, awarded Alex Pacheco with the Courage of Conscience award March 20, 1995.