NIH to Face Student Protest Over Cruel ‘Monkey Fright’ Experiments
Fired Up Young Protesters Will Demand an End to Government Experimenter’s Torment of Brain-Damaged Primates
For Immediate Release:
September 24, 2020
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382
Tomorrow, a group of Students Opposing Speciesism (SOS) members wearing monkey masks will gather at the bustling Third Street Promenade for a socially distanced protest led by the University of California–Los Angeles’ SOS hub to demand an end to National Institutes of Health (NIH) experimenter Elisabeth Murray’s painful, invasive, and deadly experiments, in which monkeys are inflicted with brain damage and then frightened with fake snakes and spiders.
When: Friday, September 25, 2 p.m.
Where: Third Street Promenade, 1415 Third St. (near the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Fourth Street), Santa Monica
Murray has received more than $36 million in taxpayer funding in the past 13 years alone for these “psychology” experiments. She cuts into monkeys’ heads, saws off a portion of their skulls to expose the brain, and then injects toxins into it to inflict permanent and traumatic brain damage. In some monkeys, she suctions out part of the brain. Afterward, the animals are placed alone in a small metal cage and experimenters terrorize them with rubber snakes and spiders, wooden mechanical snakes, and fake jumping spiders. In 30 years of these tests, Murray’s laboratory has failed to develop a single treatment or cure for humans.
“These students are demanding a better world, one in which millions of tax dollars aren’t spent on tormenting sensitive monkeys in laboratories,” says PETA Director of SOS Rachelle Owen. “PETA is proud to stand with the younger generation as it calls on NIH to stop these deranged experiments and empty the cages now.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—obtained video footage from Murray’s laboratory revealing that 23 monkeys were held alone in stark cages, including one named Wilfork, who is nearly bald, likely as a result of severe stress. After Murray is finished with the monkeys, they are all killed.
PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit SOS.PETA.org.
