Here are some detailed examples of the types of research conducted at the UW:
Since 1978, one researcher – Eberhard Fetz – has been bolting apparatuses onto the heads of macaques and implanting computer chips in their brains, and severing their spinal cords in an attempt to see if the monkeys can move their deliberating paralyzed limbs using only neutral signals. They have already used this technology on human primates (with a low degree of success). Why do they continue to torture these monkeys? When the monkeys have head apparatuses implanted, they are kept alone in cages so the implant isn’t damaged by another monkey or torn out. They spend their lives alone. Yet this research has been continually funded by the NIH to a tune of at least $14,679,419 since 2020.
In order to research how traumatic brain injury impacts learning and behaviors, researchers took young ferrets and gave them several measured blows to the skull in order to induce traumatic brain injury. Before and after these measured blows to the head, the ferrets were made to run a maze. Their ability to navigate the maze was measured before the deliberate head injury was compared to how they did after their skulls were hit. The study was finally halted after a year when the researchers determined that ferrets did not make good animal models for studying traumatic brain injury and behavior. The same kind of study was previously done to rats.
In order to study how information in the hippocampus is structured and processed, a researcher named Elizabeth Buffalo is implanting devices onto the skulls of monkeys in order to record activity in their hippocampus while the monkeys perform spatial memory tasks in virtual reality. They will also stimulate the monkey’s hippocampus in order to see what that does. Since these monkeys have a device bolted into their skull, they are housed alone with no mates. This kind of research is far from life saving, rather it is simply the human hubris of seeing what happens to a monkey’s brain when you shock them.
Associate Professor David Mack & Jeffery Chamberlain has been purchasing dogs that are bred to have muscle wasting diseases in order to study how well gene therapy can treat diseases like Duchene Muscular Dystrophy. Both researchers have previously done the same to rats with little to no positive outcome. Purposely breeding animals to have devastating diseases seems unethical, but it is routine practice for those engaged in vivisection.