‘Murder’ Ad Blasts Madison Primate Laboratories

PETA’s Bus Ad Brings Covance’s and UW-Madison’s Cruel and Wasteful Monkey Experiments Out of the Shadows

For Immediate Release:
August 15, 2018

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

“If You Call It ‘Medical Research,’ You Can Get Away With Murder.” That’s the message of a new PETA ad that will appear on the side of a Metro Transit bus now through September 15 to blast the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison and Covance laboratories where more than 10,000 nonhuman primates are imprisoned for use in cruel and deadly experiments each year. UW-Madison is home to the Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory as well as the federally supported Wisconsin National Primate Research Center. PETA is also posting the ad near the other six federally funded primate centers across the country.

“Sensitive, highly intelligent monkeys are caged, torn away from their mothers, isolated, starved, poisoned, cut up, and killed inside laboratories such as those at UW-Madison and Covance,” says PETA Vice President Alka Chandna, Ph.D. “PETA is calling on the National Institutes of Health to stop funding animal suffering, end the use of monkeys in cruel experiments, and divert research funds to superior non-animal methods.”

PETA notes that monkeys used in experiments are isolated in small cages, immobilized in restraint devices, and subjected to invasive and deadly experiments, including being infected with fatal diseases and forcibly addicted to drugs. For example, for more than 25 years, faculty members at UW-Madison have conducted a cruel “caloric restriction” experiment in which a group of monkeys have been kept chronically hungry. The result of this multimillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded starvation study is that the underfed monkeys look “less wrinkled and flabby” than a group of obese monkeys who were fed a sugary diet and confined to a small steel cage in order to enforce a sedentary lifestyle.

Approximately 47 percent of the National Institutes of Health’s budget—about $15 billion—currently funds animal experiments that many experts are now decrying as wasteful and irrelevant. Studies have shown that the results of up to 90 percent of animal studies don’t translate to humans and actually undermine work to develop cures for cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.