USDA Hits Harvard Med School With New Citations: PETA Statement
For Immediate Release:
March 27, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding two violations, one critical, against Harvard Medical School just posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture after staff negligence led to the injury of a monkey and inspectors found filth in a tube supplying juice to monkeys kept thirsty to coerce them to cooperate:
Harvard Medical School’s laboratories rack up violations and painful animal injuries like they’re trying to beat a high score on a video game. The monkey laboratories, in particular, continue to plumb new depths of reckless, negligent cruelty, and PETA is urging the National Institutes of Health to investigate them and stem the tide of taxpayer money flowing into the school.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture cited the school after one staffer failed to notice that another hadn’t properly secured a cage so that two monkeys who were never supposed to reach each other fought, causing an injury to one. Inspectors also noticed a brown, filthy substance in a tube that distributed juice to some monkeys, according to a just-released inspection report. The federal records don’t indicate whether these violations occurred in the laboratory of Margaret Livingstone, who removes infant monkeys from their mothers and distorts their vision for a year or more—most recently, by forcing the young monkeys to wear strobe goggles for 12 hours a day.
Harvard needs to get out of the business of tormenting animals and redirect its resources toward modern, non-animal research methods that will actually help humans. We urge the school to adopt PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
