I once attended a neuroscience conference featuring a talk about spinal cord injury. The presenter showed a brief video clip that haunts me still to this day.
The presenter showed a clip of his experiment in which he had crushed a cat’s spinal cord and was recording the cat’s movement on a treadmill.
He had forcibly implanted electrodes into the cat’s brain and she was struggling to keep upright, dragging her paralyzed legs on the treadmill. She repeatedly fell off the machine.
At one point, the experimenter lifted her up to reposition her on the treadmill and the cat did something that was utterly unexpected. She rubbed her head against the experimenter’s hand.
Throughout this series on animal experiments, I have tried to draw attention to the general ineffectiveness of animal experiments and how they impede our chances of finding cures.
I have focused on the human side of the equation. But we should also take a brief look at the animal side:
Just who are these animals abused in experimentation?
To read the full article in The Huffington Post – please click here.