NICHD PRIMATE RESEARCH ON MATERNAL-INFANT SEPARATION: A CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY. A letter from the Congress to Dr. Francis S. Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health, dated December 22, 2014, stated: “We are writing to express our concern about public reports of what has been described as an ongoing taxpayer-funded project involving psychological experiments on monkeys being conducted at an NIH laboratory in Poolsville, Maryland…. “From what we understand, these experiments are intended to cause monkeys to suffer from mental illness by breeding them to carry certain genes, removing them from their mothers at birth and subjecting them to distressful and sometimes painful procedures that measure their anxiety and depression.”… “In view of this, we are requesting that your office commission a Bioethics Consultation of these experiments by the NIH’s Department of Ethics and provide us with a Consultation Report by February 27, 2015” (letter attached, below). First, these psychological experiments were NOT intended to cause monkeys to suffer from mental illness by breeding them to carry certain genes but were designed to study the effects of maternal-infant separation (originally to facilitate more successful breeding practices). (Letter attached, below). THERE ARE NO GENES FOR VIOENCE—NO GENES FOR LOVE. THESE ARE LEARNED BEHAVIORS. …
Archives: Prescott
After fifty years Attachment Theory is no longer a theory. Decades of research confirm; the nature and quality of a human being’s earliest relationships shape the body and the brain for a lifetime. An epidemic of unprecedented violence exploded in the late 1960’s. On 17 Oct 1983 Congress established the mission of the NICHD/NIH to study the special health problems and requirements of mothers and children…”( PL 87-838 Sec 441). Then Secretary of State Casper Weinberger directed the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD ) to investigate the roots of violence in early childhood with a threat of setting fiscal obligations for these studies James W. Prescott, PhD., along with other leading brain and behavior researchers lead the way in identifying the source, summarized as failure of government and society to support women as nurturing mothers. Specifically their research identified affectionate touch, movement and implicitly breastfeeding as the dominate sensory experiences, or their absence, that predisposed a child to a lifetime of attachment disorders; pathological anger, rage, addiction, various forms of stress-hormonal chronic illness, including cancer, attention issues and more, or a lifetime free of these disorders. The conclusions of this vast body brain/behavior research, spanning over …
In the following and in historical link, James W. Prescott, PhD describes a fundamental and painfully flawed paradigm that blinded lading researchers, namely Harry Harlow and Rene Spitz and many that followed. Both claimed separation and isolation research was not sensory deprivation, rather social deprivation. This dissection between social and sensory deprivation is critical. To abstract social as separate from sensory during this early period of development blinds one to the damage being done. Prescott’s early research in sensory deprivation for the military brought to this research completely different assumptions, a different paradigm. He understood that during this early developmental stage, social is sensory. The developing brain is nurtured by rich and varies sensory stimulation, most significantly affectionate and playful touch and movement. Separation and isolation research deprived the developing brain of this nurturing stimulation and it was this sensory deprivation that caused dramatic and violent pathologies in the isolation reared studies. Jim describes: MM: Isn’t this what Harlow did back in the 50’s – separated mothers and infant monkeys at birth with devastating consequences? JWP: Rene Spitz, John Bowlby, and Wayne Dennis noticed that many children reared in orphanages or institutions had arrested emotional, social and intellectual development. Bowlby …
VIOLENCE: THE Failure of Culture James W. Prescott, Ph.D. The failure of Women to become Nurturing Mothers is the failure of Culture. One cannot Nurture or Love if they have not been nurtured or loved. One cannot give to someone else what he or she does not possess. Nurturing and Love are learned behaviors not to be found in our genes. There are no genes for love or violence—they are learned behaviors. This learning process begins with MOTHER in the intimacy of breastfeeding bonding, which contains all the elements of nurturing and love—from the micro molecular biochemistry of breast milk to the macro chemistry of the sensory environment of touch, movement, taste, and smell of the body of MOTHER– all that is crucial for the development of the bran gestalt called LOVE where the Whole is greater than the sum of its Parts. Two Stories of Love—American Style The first story of Love comes from Vietnam, as told by Michael McCusker in The Winter Soldier Investigation: An Inquiry into American War Crimes. (1972), a Marine sergeant who witnessed a gang rape in Vietnam. McCusker [7] tells of a rifle squad of nine men who entered a small village: http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Mantell2.pdf “They were …
The Role of the Paleocerebellum in Eliminating Violence in Mother-deprived Primates and Permitting Expression of Affectional Behaviors Not Possible Before Paleocerebellar Surgery. James W. Prescott, Ph.D. It is well recognized that Violence by Homo Sapiens throughout the World threatens species and planetary survival. Violence begins with the individual and must be understood before Cultures of Violence appear. The brain is the organ of behavior and how the brain is encoded for Peaceful or Violent Behaviors is the great challenge to Humanity. It is also well recognized that Pain and Pleasure experienced during the formative periods of brain development determine the life path of the mammalian organism that is carried throughout life. How Pain and Pleasure are encoded in our two developing brains: 1) subcortical emotional-social sexual brain, first in evolution and development; and 2) the neocortical rational, thinking brain that mediate our values, which is second in evolution and development, determines the life path of Peace or Violence that will be followed. These evolutionary-developmental processes are governed by the principle of reciprocal inhibition that governs all behavior. An organism in a state of Pain is not in a state of Pleasure. An organism in a state of Pleasure is not in …
Prematurity, Infant Mortality and In utero Sensory Deprivation For Aberrant Brain Development and Infant Survival James W. Prescott, Ph.D. In The New England Journal of Medicine ((1913, June 6) Hudson, Guttmacher and Collins (stated: Each year in the United States, nearly 500,000 infants — 1 in every 8 — are born prematurely, before 37 weeks of gestation. Despite substantial advances in their care, premature infants face a daunting array of challenges; they are at high risk for death in infancy and face severe and lifelong health problems if they survive.1 The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a legal and moral responsibility to do research in partnership with scientists and families to optimize the care of these highly vulnerable infants. Matthews, T.J. and MacDorman, M.F. (2007) in Infant Mortality Statistics from the 2004 Period Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set. Division of Vital Statistics, National Vital Statistics Report, Centers For Disease Control and Prevention stated More than one-half (55 percent) of all infant deaths in the United States in 2004 occurred to the 2 percent of infants born at less than 32 weeks of gestation. Still, infant mortality rates for the preterm (34-36 weeks of gestation) infants were three times those for …