Humpjones

Rape, Torture, Science: Sex Research with Lab Animals

Posted Sep 06, 2007 6 comments

In the course of researching material for my upcoming, world-changing bestseller Human Sexuality for Filthy Apes, I’ve been noticing two disturbing trends.  First of all, academic research about sex is boring as hell, in addition to being maddeningly vague and inconclusive.  Considering the current sorry-ass state of Neurology in the western world, that’s probably inevitable. 

Second of all—and this part is actually disturbing—I’ve been watching a pattern emerge: a great deal of sex research is carried out by raping animals in a laboratory setting.  Feel free to read that over again, this article is not a prank.  (For anyone still wondering, the UFO landing was a prank, yes.  And the RealDoll documentary was “filler,” yes.) My e-buddy drew hempel has referred to science as “Mass Ritual Sacrifice,” but that only sounds crazy if you ignore the actual lab procedures involved with the harvesting of knowledge.  As it turns out, objectivity involves a great deal of bloodshed.  And what could be more sexy than that?

Can He Back That Up?

Sure can—imagine being an intern for this experiment:

Frances Burton performed a series of experiments on Rhesus macaques that provided evidence that females of the species are physiologically capable of experiencing orgasm. Her experiment on three adult female Rhesus consisted of placing them in a metal framework with harnesses, grooming them, and then providing five minutes of clitoral stimulation, five minutes of vaginal stimulation, followed by a four minute rest, and then five minutes more of vaginal stimulation. Burton notes, “while arbitrary, these time units were chosen to well exceed the duration of an episode of actual stimulation and intromission in a copulatory series in the natural state” (1971, p. 182). Two of the females were tested seven times, one only four times. Each animal was tested from the four days prior to her putative ovulation to two days into the follicular phase of her cycle “to maximize her responsiveness”

That nightmare gem is from Elisabeth Lloyd’s paper, All About Eve: Bias in Evolutionary Explanations of Women’s Sexuality, which is actually one of the best, most readable articles I’ve gotten ahold of.  (You can download our PDF copy by clicking here.)

Homo Sapiens Sapiens Have it Easy

For contrast, take a look at this experiment, as described in “Brain Activation during Human Male Ejaculation”—and yeah, I got a PDF of that, too:

Tasks. The volunteers were asked to perform the following tasks twice: rest, erection, sexual stimulation, and ejaculation induced by sexual stimulation. To minimize motor activity by the volunteer during the scan, sexual stimulation was provided by his female partner by means of manual penile stimulation in the tasks stimulation and ejaculation. Manual stimulation was continued throughout ejaculation. The volunteer’s head was maintained in position with a head-restraining adhesive band, and, to minimize visual input, volunteers were asked to keep their eyes closed.

In the week before the experiments, the volunteers and their female partners were informed about how the experiments would be conducted, and they were asked to practice at home, especially regarding minimizing head and limb movements.

Another Hump Jones Flashback

One of the most incoherent articles I’ve ever done was about the pain—and the beauty—of a Viagra overdose.  In fact, I think the title went something like HOLY SHIT, YOU JUST OVERDOSED ON VIAGRA. As it turns out, that was part of the clinical testing for Viagra. There are some folks who theorize that Bill Hicks died because he realized his most cynical, hateful, and bleak jokes would all be major network TV shows within a year.  You can’t mock human depravity or stupidity—your best efforts at parody will still fall far short of simple reality.  As Charles Mingus—who could toilet train any cat—advised his son: “Don’t improve on reality until you know what it is.”

I still have no idea what it is, and I probably never will.  However, even the BBC reported on this one:

Drug company Pfizer has admitted carrying out tests on Viagra that involved mutilating dogs’ genitals but defended the experiments as essential.

The research on the impotence pill was carried out at Pfizer’s UK laboratories in Sandwich, Kent after earlier tests on humans.

Animal research is of course disturbing, but it’s also nescessary.  Granted, horrible things are done to helpless animals behind closed doors, but it’s important to bear in mind that all of this research saves human lives.  Viagra, after all, cures cancer, AIDS, and halitosis—and Pfizer has been giving it away for free in Africa since 2003.  That kind of world-saving philanthropy more than justifies tiny little atrocities like this:

Animal rights groups are outraged at experiments, which involved removing the foreskins of the anaesthetised beagles and then giving them shocks with electrodes inserted into the centre of their penises.

The company, which also carried out tests on rabbits, rats, mice and monkeys in Bristol, put the dogs down afterwards.

TOTAL SPECIES EQUALITY

The good news is: you’re next! Your generation is being prepped for an exciting future on a cold metal table somewhere, thanks to Hollywood’s latest round of conditioning: Saw, Hostel, and dozens of other torture porn flicks.  I will probably use this image again in another, equally cheerful context, but for now, let’s finish up with the promo poster for the upcoming, mainstream snuff porno Captivity, since a picture is worth a billion concluding paragraphs:

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