Animal Experiments and their Alternatives in Psychiatry
During the last twenty years, the most enthusiastic advocates of the use of animal models in the study of human psychiatric dysfunction have been Harlow and Suomi. In an influential paper, Induced Depression in Monkeys (1974), they argued that more extensive use of non-human primates “would have great potential utility since many manipulations and measurements presently prohibited in human study by ethical and practical considerations could be readily performed on non-human primate subjects in well-controlled experimental environments.” Harlow & Suomi concluded this paper with the following statement: “The results obtained to date on induced depression in monkeys show that proper and profound depressions can be produced relatively easily by a variety of techniques. These induced depressions either bear a close resemblance to human depression or have such similarity as to suggest that closely correlated human and animal depressive patterns may be achieved with refined techniques. The results to date also provide adequate data for the conduct of meaningful researches on the effects of pharmacological agents which either enhance, inhibit or preclude the experimental production of depression. Further, the existence of firm and fast monkey depression syndromes offers vast opportunities for testing a wide range of therapeutic techniques, either behavioural or biochemical.”