Ethics- Monkey Drug Trial
PART 1:
Last week I found a list of the top ten unethical experiments that had been done throughout the many years of Psychology that involved humans and animals. Out of the list there was one such study that I found to be particularly interesting, and surprising that such an experiment was ever aloud to be conducted. This study was done by Deneau, Yanagita & Seevers (1969) and was known as the monkey drug trials. The experiment was looking at the effects of self-administration of drugs by the monkey. In other words, whether a monkey would become addicted to drugs and as a result self-administer itself in order to maintain the drug abuse. The monkeys were first injected with drugs (some monkeys received cocaine, morphine and amphetamines) and researchers observed the behavior afterwards, consequently the monkeys became dependent on the drugs. The experiment found that the biological traits were similar to that of humans, and results suggested that one of the key motivations for drug abuse was the psychological dependence. This experiment found the key reason why drug abuse takes place which can help researchers and physicians provide a psychological treatment which can help people with a drug addiction give up. As this kind of experiment cannot be done on humans, the only option for the researchers was to use monkeys. However, animals and humans are different and therefore findings on non-humans should be cautious when suggesting a similar trait can be found in humans.
Part 2:
The monkey drug trial study in 1969 turned out to violate a few ethical guidelines throughout the experiment tested. First comes debriefing, the monkey drug trial violated this guideline. Debriefing is to receive an explanation of a study or investigation after participation is complete. None of the monkey in the study was given an explanation of what was going to take place. The doctors did not give an explanation to the monkeys for the reason they were monkeys, they wouldn’t
Last week I found a list of the top ten unethical experiments that had been done throughout the many years of Psychology that involved humans and animals. Out of the list there was one such study that I found to be particularly interesting, and surprising that such an experiment was ever aloud to be conducted. This study was done by Deneau, Yanagita & Seevers (1969) and was known as the monkey drug trials. The experiment was looking at the effects of self-administration of drugs by the monkey. In other words, whether a monkey would become addicted to drugs and as a result self-administer itself in order to maintain the drug abuse. The monkeys were first injected with drugs (some monkeys received cocaine, morphine and amphetamines) and researchers observed the behavior afterwards, consequently the monkeys became dependent on the drugs. The experiment found that the biological traits were similar to that of humans, and results suggested that one of the key motivations for drug abuse was the psychological dependence. This experiment found the key reason why drug abuse takes place which can help researchers and physicians provide a psychological treatment which can help people with a drug addiction give up. As this kind of experiment cannot be done on humans, the only option for the researchers was to use monkeys. However, animals and humans are different and therefore findings on non-humans should be cautious when suggesting a similar trait can be found in humans.
Part 2:
The monkey drug trial study in 1969 turned out to violate a few ethical guidelines throughout the experiment tested. First comes debriefing, the monkey drug trial violated this guideline. Debriefing is to receive an explanation of a study or investigation after participation is complete. None of the monkey in the study was given an explanation of what was going to take place. The doctors did not give an explanation to the monkeys for the reason they were monkeys, they wouldn’t