HBM124: Banana Softies

Here Be Monsters

Here Be Monsters Podcast

Science, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Personal Journals, Documentary

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2019

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Gene” says it started because he wanted to be a veterinarian. So he took a job as a research associate at a vivarium that studied cancer drugs. He was often alone in the lab at night with hundreds or thousands of research animals around him. The monkeys were his favorite, especially the rhesus macaques. He loved to give them treats, play movies and Celine Dion for them. And sometimes he’d lean up against the cages to let his monkey friends groom him. He knew the work would be hard, but he believed his was justified because the primate research helped people in the long run.

In his two years at the lab, Gene radiated a lot of monkeys. He and his colleagues studied the deteriorating effects of radiation and the side effects of experimental cancer drugs seeking FDA approval. Once a monkey became too sick and lethargic, it was Gene’s job to euthanize them. He would hold them as they died and tell them he was sorry.

After one study with a particularly high radiation doses, Gene found himself alone again in a lab late at night, euthanizing more monkeys and thinking to himself, “Those were my friends... Those were my fucking friends.” These words became the screamed lyrics to the unfinished, unpublished song that Gene performs in this episode.

Gene left the job shortly after writing the song, but he still works in medical research. He no longer performs euthanizations.

Producer: Bethany Denton

Editor: Jeff Emtman

Music: The Black Spotand “Gene”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters.
0:04.0	So the lab that I worked for essentially so you have these you have pharma
0:18.6	companies that say hey I have this drug that I think can do this.
0:24.2	We want to test this, see if it's toxic.
0:27.4	Usually at one time in the facility,
0:29.2	we have well over probably 30 companies at one time running some type of test in our facility.
0:37.0	We have like long hallways and each one is just a room off to the left or to the right, and it's just filled with cages.
0:46.0	There are larger cages where there's bark on the ground and we have like tire swings form and things like that, stuff for them to kind of play on it's supposed to further e-stress because essentially like if you if you're a patient in a hospital like a human patient and you're stressed out.
1:03.0	I mean, you're not going to heal as well,
1:05.0	or like the other stressors on top of what you're already gone through.
1:09.0	So like a big thing is just keeping the monkeys happy and calm.
1:13.0	A quick content note, this episode is about animal testing and euthanasia. Hello? Can you hear me? I can't. Can you hear me? Yes. Sweet. Yeah, so why don't we go ahead and start by describing what is a happy monkey look like? What does a scared monkey look like what does a scared monkey look like what does a sick
1:54.4	monkey look like? Happy monkey is usually just jumping around playing with toys you
2:01.4	know like they do a lip smack to show their friends.
2:05.0	Just like a, and they just like lip smack to each other and like if someone's in the room
2:09.3	they're usually really responsive and attentive.
2:13.6	It just shows that they're friends.
2:14.7	And then like a nervous one would essentially
2:17.6	show its teeth and like lick the back of its teeth.
2:22.1	If they're like uncomfortable or stressed out they'll just keep grooming themselves
2:25.8	and they get something called alopecia where they eventually are like losing hair in certain spots.
2:38.4	A sick monkey will just be like hunched over and just be like really tired like
	...

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