LSD Drug Experiments on Elephants
This type of animal research experiment continues to be done in laboratories across America. Instead of elephants as their subject model the researchers might use instead groups of chimpanzees, dogs and various monkey species as well as other animals. Oath of God Ministries condemns these experiments as worthless and showing no scientific merit. When funded by the NIH we see a steady stream of wasted tax payer dollars.
Dr. West, Department of Psychiatry, Neurology and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine was researching musth in young male elephants. Musth is a highly aggressive behavior in young male elephants which causes a discharge in the temporal glands. This behavior might be expressed by young male elephants in the wild. To create a facsimile of the musth condition Dr. West injected 279 mg LSD into a male elephant at Oklahoma City’s Lincoln Park Zoo on August 3, 1962. An employee of the zoo gave Dr. West unauthorized and direct access to the elephants for his wayward experiment. The dose of 297 mg was 1,000 times the dose typical of human recreational use. Within five minutes the elephant collapsed to the ground. Less than two hours later the elephant died.
Despite public outcry this same experiment was attempted again by yet another psychiatrist to reexamine the relationship between LSD and musth. In the Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 1984, 22(1), 53-56, Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, University of California wrote “LSD-induced effects in elephants: Comparisons with musth behavior.” Two elephants (male and female) chained to a barn were used in this study. Both received injections of LSD. The study concluded, “taken together, these results suggest that elephants can tolerate high dosages of LSD but that the resultant behavior provides an unsatisfactory model for the natural aggression and behavioral disorders associated with musth or temporal gland secretions”. Is it important that the American public should know that elephants can tolerate high dosages of LSD?
Researchers continue to pump animals such as chimpanzees, monkeys and dogs with narcotic drugs for observational purposes when extensive research data is already available from human studies. Dogs are overdosed on oxycodone. Pigs are force fed alcohol. Non-human primates are drugged with cocaine, meth, heroine and other addictive drugs for the purpose of studying addictive behavior in humans and with a hope of finding a cure for these illegal drugs. These types of experiments are a waste of taxpayer money because the spiritual component in animals does not exist and the spiritual component in humans is completely ignored by scientists.
These experiments are a waste of tax payer dollars and cause immeasurable suffering on animals. Some of the cruelest experiments done to animals is for behavior science not medical science. Oftentimes it is nothing more than a meandering path of curiosity which leaves a quake of suffering and death to its victims.