Having read the ethics section explaining the question of animal research, would you approve the following research? Why or why not? Professor King is a psychobiologist working on the frontiers of a new and exciting research area of neuroscience canned brain grafting. Research has shown that neural tissue can be removed from the brains of monkey fetuses and implanted into the brains of monkeys that have suffered brain damage. The neurons seem to make the proper connections and sometimes are effective in improving performance in brain-damaged animals. These experiments offer important animal models for human degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alxheimer’s/ Professor King wants to transplant tissue from fetal monkey brains into the entorhinal cortex of adult monkeys; this is the area of the human brain that is involved with Alzheimer’s disease. (continued)
The experiment will use 20 adult rhesus monkeys. First, the monkeys will be subjected to ablation surgery in the entorhinal cortex. This procedure will involve anesthetizing the animals, opening their skulls, and making lesions using a surgical instrument. After their recover, the monkey’s will be tested on a learning task to make sure their memory is impaired. Three months later, half of the animals will be given transplant surgery. Tissue taken from the cortex of monkey fetuses will be implanted into the area of the brain damage. Control animals will be subjected to the same surgery, and all animals will be allowed to recover for two months. They will then learn a task to test the hypothesis that the animals having brain grafts will show better memory than the control group.
Professor King argues that this research is in the exploratory stages and can only be done using animals. She further states that by the year 2030 about 72 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s disease and that her research could lead to a treatment for the devastating memory loss that Alzheimer’s victims suffer.