University of Maryland Experimenter Cuts Fetuses Out of Baboons in Apparent Violation of Law
For Immediate Release:
May 9, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today urging it to investigate the University of Maryland–Baltimore for allegedly violating federal animal protection laws. The alleged violations concern experimenter Eugene Albrecht, who has conducted multiple major survival surgeries on baboons for decades.
Performing more than two major surgeries on an animal is prohibited under federal law unless an exception is sought and filed with the USDA. From 2014 to 2022, UMB failed to report Albrecht’s multiple surgeries to the USDA, as required by law.
Albrecht’s experiments, which are funded by taxpayers, involve repeatedly impregnating olive baboons, injecting them with hormones, and cutting out their fetuses via cesarean section. He regularly collaborates with Gerald Pepe, an experimenter at Eastern Virginia Medical School whose laboratory has a years-long record of federal animal welfare violations and was cited by the USDA for performing up to three cesarean sections each on baboons without approval.
“The University of Maryland is behaving as though animal welfare laws don’t apply to it,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Under the law, public universities are obligated to be transparent to the public that funds them and not cloak the atrocities they inflict on animals.”
After PETA shared information about the violations at Eastern Virginia Medical School with Virginia legislators, Pepe quietly killed the baboons, even though the group had secured placement at an accredited sanctuary for them. The taxpayer-funded experiments on baboons at both schools have been conducted since at least 1980 but have resulted in no treatments or cures for humans.
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.
