PETA Exhibit Exposes Violent History of Animal Experiments, Including at Charles River
For Immediate Release:
May 10, 2023
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
PETA is set to unveil its eye-opening exhibit “Without Consent,” which explores the troubled history of experiments on nonconsenting animals. The installation challenges institutions, including Charles River Laboratories, located in Reno, to rethink this exploitative, expensive, cruel, and archaic concept of science. Watch the trailer here.
When: May 17–21, 12 noon–4 p.m.
Where: Reno Arch, at the intersection of Virginia Street and Commercial Row, Reno
Modeled after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “Without Consent” will be on display locally for five days as part of a national tour. It features 24 panels with descriptions and photographs of nearly 200 animal experiments conducted at U.S. institutions from the 1920s through today. An interactive virtual exhibit is also available here.
“Without Consent” tells the true stories of animals harmed and killed in experiments that they did not and could not consent to,” says Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Humans are only one animal species among many. Having the power to exploit the others does not give us the right to do so.”
The 110 million animals killed every year in U.S. laboratories are individuals who experience pain and fear, yet they’re burned, force-fed chemicals, sickened with disease, and robbed of their babies. Charles River’s Reno facility force-feeds chemicals to monkeys in painful and deadly tests—despite the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration acknowledges that 95% of drugs determined safe and effective in animal tests are found either unsafe or ineffective when tested in humans—and baked 32 monkeys alive when a thermostat malfunctioned.
Charles River is also under federal investigation in relation to its importation of endangered long-tailed macaques from Cambodia, more than 1,000 of whom are currently awaiting transfer to a U.S. sanctuary.
“Without Consent” also makes the point that vulnerable humans—including orphans in tuberculosis and psychological experiments, immigrant women in gynecological surgeries, soldiers in LSD and poison gas tests, and impoverished Black men in syphilis experiments—were exploited in experiments. Just as society now understands that these experiments were wrong, “Without Consent” shows we need to let a similar moral awakening guide our conduct today by extending consideration to other nonconsenting sentient beings who suffer and die in experiments from floor-cleaner product tests to mother-infant separation studies.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
