Hands Off the Adorable Monkeys, NASA
Victory Update: Following a year of vigorous campaigning, PETA has learned that government officials have grounded plans for a cruel and ineffective radiation experiment on monkeys. Learn more about this victory for monkeys.
You may remember that years back, PETA was instrumental in getting NASA out of the monkey business when we successfully pushed the agency to cancel plans to launch straightjacketed, electrode-implanted monkeys into space. So, as you can imagine, we leapt to attention when we learned recently that the mad scientists at NASA want to blast up to 28 squirrel monkeys with a massive dose of gamma rays in order to “simulate” the space radiation they would be exposed to if they were humans on a three-year mission to Mars (which they aren’t, but apparently NASA isn’t one to quibble over details).
The monkeys will then spend the rest of their lives being forced to perform a host of “behavioral tasks” to assess how the radiation affected their brains. Although NASA has repeatedly told the media that these monkeys won’t be killed, they left out the teensy detail that earlier radiation experiments NASA has conducted on monkeys have caused the animals to suffer from fatal cancers, including brain tumors.
We asked NASA to halt these cruel and pointless experiments in a letter we sent to the agency this week. No answer yet, but in the meantime, please let NASA know how you feel about its plans to experiment on monkeys.
Written by Alisa Mullins
