Psychologist Edward Taub, best known as the target of animal-rights activists in a celebrated 1981 case involving his treatment of research monkeys at his Silver Spring (Maryland) lab, has received a public stamp of approval from his peers. Last week, at its annual meeting in Washington, the American Psychological Society (APS) bestowed its highest honor on him, naming him a William James Fellow.
The ceremony attracted a solitary protester from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Taub's nemesis, but the intruder was quickly hustled out, according to APS director Alan Kraut.
Taub was honored for "fundamental discoveries" about brain reorganization, upon which he has based new treatments for human rehabilitation. "I was astonished," Taub says. "I thought that the Silver Spring monkey situation would preclude any public recognition of anything I had done."
Taub's award is based on research that he says is no longer permitted anywhere: He severed nerves in monkeys' arms to see what happens in the corresponding regions of their brains. Infiltration of his lab by a PETA member led to police seizure of the 16 animals and a trial in which Taub was convicted of providing inadequate veterinary care to six monkeys. He spent years litigating the case, and in 1984 a Maryland appeals court overturned the conviction. Since 1986, he has been at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.
Taub and others, including Tim Pons of Bowman Gray Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, have published research on the monkeys showing that their brains, surprisingly, underwent "massive reorganization" after their injuries. Based on this research, Taub has designed a routine to help people with disabilities from brain injuries that entails extensive exercise of an afflicted limb.
One of Taub's monkeys still survives, at Tulane University's primate center in New Orleans. "Locked in his brain is the answer to an extremely important question about brain reorganization, not just in the cortex but in the thalamus," says Taub. But Congress has decreed that, while "terminal" (pre-euthanasia) experiments can be done on the animal, none may last more than 4 hours. Probing the thalamus, says Taub, would take too long.
