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by mikecane
4779 days ago
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Back in the 1980s, PBS had a science program hosted by Jim Hartz (Wikipedia says it was Innovation). It had a program about how the lack of touch -- physical contact from others -- also affected health. Part of that program showed the same kind of monkey research mentioned in this article. I once had a transcript. Too bad the program isn't online for all to see. |
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Among a lot of material, she saw a lot of videos of monkey experiments, like Harlow's (mentioned in the article) and I saw some too :) . It's quite striking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsA5Sec6dAI
from the article
"Harlow subjected newborn rhesus macaques to appalling isolation—months spent in cages in the company only of “surrogate mothers” made of wire with cartoonish monkey heads and bottles attached. Luckier monkeys had that and cloth-covered versions of the same thing to cuddle. (It is remarkable what a soft cloth can do to calm an anxious baby monkey down.) In the most extreme cases, the babies languished alone at the bottom of a V-shaped steel container. Cruel as these experiments were, Harlow proved that the absence of mothering destroyed the monkeys’ ability to mingle with other monkeys, though the “cloth mother” could mitigate the worst effects of isolation."
the article goes on to show how there are different gene expressions amongst the differently-raised monkeys, and even posits that medication could help with the physical expressions of loneliness:
"Cole can imagine giving people medications to treat loneliness, particularly when it exacerbates chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. These could be betablockers, which reduce the physical effects of stress; anti-inflammatory medicine; or even Tylenol—since physical and emotional pain overlap, it turns out that Tylenol can reduce the pain of heartbreak."
The ending statement is:
"One message I take away from this is, ‘Hey, it’s not just early life that counts,’ ” he says. “We have to choose our life well.” "