Punk Icon Iggy Pop Donates Song to PETA to End Cruel Monkey Experiments

You can see the terror in their eyes. You can feel their desperation as they try to break free from restraints. These monkeys just want to be “free,” like everyone else. “Godfather of Punk” Iggy Pop is helping to end this torture by donating his hit song “Free” to PETA for a video that highlights the suffering of monkeys held captive and used in cruel laboratory experiments.

Watch this heart-rending video set to Iggy’s haunting song:

“Anyone can see the pain and terror in these monkeys’ eyes,” Iggy says. “No one should have to suffer like this. They deserve to be free.”

The eerie, tragic video features footage from PETA’s investigations of National Institutes of Health (NIH) experimenter Elisabeth Murray’s painful, invasive, and deadly experiments, in which monkeys are inflicted with permanent brain damage and then frightened with fake snakes and spiders. The video also includes footage of University of Massachusetts–Amherst experimenter Melinda Novak’s solitary confinement experiments, in which monkeys are driven insane inside small, barren cages. Monkeys used in tests by multibillion-dollar contract testing facility Covance and in child abuse experiments at a now-shuttered NIH laboratory in Maryland are also shown in the video.

Learn more about PETA’s victories against animal experimentation.

These experiments force sensitive, complex monkeys to endure almost unimaginable mental and physical distress. Some primates have been observed to hold wakes, turn to friends for comfort, and lose the will to live in response to the deaths of loved ones. Not only are these experiments unethical, they’re also extremely wasteful and ineffective. For example, Murray’s NIH experiments have raked in more than $36 million in taxpayer dollars in the past 13 years alone. Yet not one treatment or cure for humans has been developed in the 30 years that she’s been torturing animals.

Iggy is a longtime PETA collaborator, previously starring in a video set to Nick Cave’s song “Breathless” and speaking out on PETA’s behalf against the annual Canadian seal slaughter. He also penned a letter to the president of Yale University asking him to end experimenter Christine Lattin’s cruel experiments on house sparrows and other birds.

Iggy also joins a long list of musicians—including Paul McCartney, The Black Keys, and Sia—who have donated songs to PETA.