Editorial: Campus Center building holds haunting, scientific past

The Campus Center building has been a part of our campus since 1951, and it has served a multitude of purposes over the years. ETSU plans on demolishing the building this summer to make way for new construction, so recently, they posted a video commemorating the legacy of the building. There was mention of how the building used to run experiments on monkeys and the effect cigarettes used to have on their lungs.

The experiment was run by Dr. Anthony Delucia all the way back in 1977, according to a previous article written by the East Tennessean. The monkeys previously had undergone research at both the universities of Kentucky and Louisiana. In the experiments, the monkeys would have a mask attached to their face while a machine funneled cigarette smoke through a hose in the mask. 

The reasoning for this experiment was to observe the monkeys’ lung’s ability to resist smoke particles, as well as the long-term effects of smoking. The article mentioned there were twenty monkeys involved, and Dr. Delucia estimated that they smoked about 11,000 cigarettes each. The monkeys were put on the machine for one to three hours every single day; sometimes they would throw up from all of the smoking.

There is no doubt that this research was important, especially back then when the danger of cigarettes was still a widely contested topic. What is also apparent, however, is that Dr. Delucia, whether he knew it or not, caused irreparable damage to those monkeys’ lungs without their consent. The innate cruelty of animal testing isn’t really a debate anymore. These tests were very mentally and physically tolling in context with the intelligence of the creatures involved.

According to Scienceline, the National Institute of Health banned testing on chimpanzees in 2015, but that doesn’t include monkeys. It’s a sobering thought to remember that this type of testing still goes on in the world today. This is certainly a shadier part of ETSU’s history; hopefully, one that will crumble with the rest of the Campus Center.