Wierd Animal Studies

  There are a fair number of animal studies which tend to revolve around bizzare plans, usually for doing things to children, but sometimes relating to the drug war.




Harlow's Monkeys

  Suspiciously after World War II, a propaganda wave of "scientific" parenting which involved keeping a baby completely devoid of touch or human contact was heavily pressed. Psychologist Harry Harlow decided to try it on monkeys, rather than human babies.

  Every last one of them went violently insane.

  Amusingly (or not), school was simulated by allowing social contact through a plexiglass divider, simulating supervision in maintaining a distance between persons. They still went violently insane.

  Quite curiously, the only therapy that produced any recovery was letting the tortured little monkeys hang out with younger monkeys, apparently to restart the social development of which they were deprived. (PMID 5283943). Ending age segregation of children and youth and allowing unstructured, unsupervised interaction would seem the most viable response.

Seligman's Dogs

  In the late 1960s, Martin Seligman decided to electrocute dogs until they just lied still.

  This provides the model for something called "learned helplessness," and the tendency of police to keep persons completely isolated in a box, staring at the plaster wall because the secondary trauma shoveled by state television is unpleasant, by a campaign of interdiction should someone go for a walk, is probably a copy of this.

  The initial treatment for induced learned helplessness through torture seems to be giving the affected something that they do have power over (that is not a child or subordinate) to develop a sense of independent agency. It also suggests, along with Donald Winnicot's theories on the conflict between the true and false self, that providing the means to escape an externally-provided format is ideal.




Calhoun's Rats

  Between 1952 and 1968, John Calhoun got his jollies by chucking rats in a single room in a deprived environment, albeit one with unlimited food and water.

  They fell into a threefold life cycle. First, things were basically normal. Shortly thereafter, spontaneous miscarriage and effectively-random acts of violence were the primary form. Finally, the last surviving rats isolated themselves and licked themselves neurotically all day.

  Canonically, the main characters from the childrens' book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and the animated film The Secret of NIMH are escapees from this. They are not otherwise based on real events.

  Calhoun's rat experiments provide warning and insight into situations where the state coerces high-population-density forced association, such as schools and prisons. Note that jail and prison could be a theraputic environment (or, you could have the right to deal with a civilian and have your dispute mediated by a civilian jury in a restorative justice environment like the stated legal system says), but unfortunately, the state opted for "animal torture is job security."

  The solution appears to involve avoiding high-population, high-density forced association, possibly through topography. Note that the birth rates suggest that the affected area is in the terminal phase.




Alexander's Rats

  The "drug war," aside from financing drug trafficking by making something that would be almost free that anyone could grow at home really, really expensive and solely in the domain of those who could pay bribes, created a lot of hoaxes. Cannabis causes brain damage, but only when combined with total oxygen deprivation (Heath, 1974). MDMA causes brain damage, but only when it's actually the ADHD drug methamphetamine with zero MDMA whatsoever (Ricaurte, 2002).

  Between 1978 and 1981, Bruce Alexander decided to question a little bit more of the so-called "science."

  Noticing that all the "addiction and reinforcement" studies, usually involving rats, involved rats isolated in a barren cage with no features other than the two water bottles, one of which was drug laced, they tried switching it up. A running/treadmill wheel. A small ball. Other rats for social company.

  It turns out that morphine, cocaine, and the like are not addictive when there is social contact and anything else to do. In fact, the rats not kept in a deprived environment would not consume the drugs.

  Addicting a rat for two months by having no non-morphine-laced water while in isolation, that rat still refused the morphine when moved to the non-deprived cage.

  The "rat park" experiments shine a very interesting light on drug use as a secondary marker and/or correlate of trauma. They also posit that drug abuse would be unlikely to continue if there were anything healthy in the state-assigned society.


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