TODAY (Video): PETA Supporters Cause a Ruckus Over UMass’ Monkey Menopause Tests
For Immediate Release:
March 8, 2022
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
Earlier this evening, four PETA supporters crashed a University of Massachusetts–Amherst (UMass) alumni gathering at the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where they confronted UMass President Marty Meehan and interrupted his speech to expose the school’s horrific menopause experiments on marmosets. Photos and video footage of the happening are available here.
The protesters shouted out information about the tests, including that university experimenters zip-tie frightened marmosets into restraining devices, drill into their skulls and implant electrodes, cut open their necks to expose muscle, and thread electrode leads from the scalp and neck to the abdomen. To mimic hot flashes in the marmosets, experimenters cut out their ovaries and heat the animals with hand warmers, like those placed in mittens during wintertime. In another UMass experiment, castrated male marmosets were injected with testosterone and then tested for cognitive functioning. In some tests, these sensitive, social monkeys are kept in solitary confinement.
“UMass alumni deserve to know that their alma mater is tormenting monkeys behind closed doors,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA supporters are rallying to shut down the marmoset experiments at this university.”
PETA has been contacted by numerous UMass alumni and donors concerned about the school’s animal welfare violations. The university has been cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for severely burning an animal on a heating pad as he was recovering from surgery, failing to alert an attending veterinarian to sick animals, and permitting a monkey to escape and injuring the animal’s tail during recapture.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
