Announcement shows a complete disregard for animals as sentient beings, and a glimpse of a dystopian future.

By Animal Welfare Director Dave Neale

When raising animals in captivity, animal welfare guidelines and laws should ensure they are kept in conditions free from pain, suffering and the potential for mental health problems to develop.

In many countries, such as the UK, to do otherwise is considered animal cruelty and is liable to have legal repercussions.

Yet, a team of scientists have announced they have cloned macaques and deliberately edited their genes to give them mental health disorders including anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.

The intention is to be able to create animals with medical disorders on a mass scale for the medical testing industry.

Medical testing on animals already sees grotesque abuses carried out on a mass scale in the name of research. It is believed hundreds of thousands of macaques are bred for this purpose annually, but the latest steps show an even greater disregard for their individuality and ability to suffer.

Right now, the five cloned macaque babies are being kept in a glass box with no parent. This is already a huge breach of their welfare likely to result in long-term health problems.

Primates, like humans, are born with an exceedingly immature brain that will take many months to become fully operational with all its senses active.

During this time, the mother is the caregiver and removing infants from their mothers is known to be severely detrimental to their physical and psychological well-being, resulting in acute fear, stress and long-term mental health implications.

For the five macaques unfortunate enough to have been born as an experiment, their first few weeks of life will be an existence of confusion, fear and anxiety.

Tragically, they have no hope of overcoming this fate. Not only does the cruel environment they are being raised in leave them with very little of hope of “normal” development, the gene editing inflicted on them has removed the possibility completely. 

These five animals are destined to suffer. They have been born to experience psychological trauma, to endure an unending madness. I can think of no greater cruelty.

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