Dr. Edward Taub conducted harrowing experiments on the seventeen Silver Spring monkeys in his Maryland lab. The monkeys were rescued by Montgomery County police in 1981 after being reported by PETA founder Alex Pacheco. Ten years later, when Supreme Court rejected PETA's application for custody and ordered euthanasia, the surviving three monkeys had their brains examined for the last time before being put to death while still in a deep coma.