Victory! UW-Madison Ends Gruesome Sleep Deprivation Test on Monkeys After Pressure From PETA
For Immediate Release:
June 27, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Following months of pressure from PETA, a nightmarish sleep deprivation experiment conducted on tiny marmoset monkeys at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has ended.
The move comes after PETA urged the National Institute on Aging (which funded the experiment), the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate the experiment and halt its funding. Tens of thousands of PETA supporters also contacted the university to urge it to end the cruel experiment.
In the test, which was devised by notorious University of Massachusetts–Amherst experimenter Agnès Lacreuse, experimenters planned to blast monkeys with sounds as loud as a lawn mower every 15 minutes all night for up to two months. The proposal was so cruel that it earned the federal government’s highest possible pain classification, “Column E”—in which animals are forced to endure prolonged distress without pain relief. Records obtained by PETA show that, ultimately, only six monkeys were used in the experiment, rather than the originally proposed 24, and that the test ceased after one night.
“Lacreuse is despicable for thinking up this horror, and it’s disgraceful that UW-Madison tried to carry it out,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Now that it’s been stopped, UMass must end Lacreuse’s cruel and pointless menopause experiments on monkeys.”
Lacreuse has tormented monkeys for years, drilling into their skulls, cutting into their necks, and restraining them for hours at a time. She has squandered more than $5 million in taxpayer money on these curiosity-driven tests.
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.
