Attention, Shoppers! PETA Video Shows Grisly Monkey Experiments at Harvard Medical School

For Immediate Release:
December 12, 2022

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

Holiday shoppers are about to get an eyeful of the horrors endured by baby monkeys at Harvard Medical School, as PETA begins wheeling a mobile billboard through the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, today, showing graphic video footage similar to that of Margaret Livingstone’s gruesome experiments at the school.

The mobile billboard will drive up to Smith Campus Center at 1350 Massachusetts Ave. and circle around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the holiday market near Harvard Square, and the CambridgeSide shopping mall.

PETA’s video shows the torment of a baby monkey named Britches, whose eyes were crudely stitched shut by experimenters as part of a sensory deprivation study in California, as well as other infant monkeys used in maternal deprivation experiments.

Livingstone resurrected these crude experiments and for decades has torn infant monkeys from their mothers, condemning some to complete darkness for up to a year by sewing their eyelids shut, just to see how badly it affects their development. Not a single treatment for humans has come from 40 years of this abuse.

“Livingstone’s experiments produce nothing but misery, wasting money and monkeys’ lives,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA asks that shoppers extend the holiday spirit to these sensitive infant monkeys and call on the university to release them to sanctuaries.”

Livingstone’s experiments also include rearing monkeys by humans in welding masks, so the babies never see a face. After years of torment, she kills many of the animals and dissects their brains.

PETA released federal reports last month that document numerous violations of federal animal welfare guidelines in Livingstone’s laboratory. A young monkey strangled to death after her head became stuck in a hole she’d chewed in a cloth “surrogate mother” that experimenters gave her after she was taken away from her real mother. A monkey escaped from his cage and fought with another monkey, whose finger was amputated because of the resulting injuries.

Veterinary staff also reported Livingstone to federal authorities because she failed to wear personal protective equipment while experimenting on a restrained monkey.

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.