Video: PETA U.K. Supporters Confront UMass Chancellor at Alumni Event in London

For Immediate Release:
February 8, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA U.K. supporters confronted University of Massachusetts–Amherst (UMass) Chancellor Javier Reyes at the Kimpton Fitzroy London hotel over the school’s horrific menopause experiments on marmoset monkeys. The moment that Reyes approached the microphone, PETA supporters carrying signs that read, “UMass: Stop Torturing Marmosets,” walked to the podium and shouted, “UMass has been drilling into the skulls of marmosets and tormenting them to study menopause. Marmosets don’t even experience menopause, and this research has to stop now!” Before being escorted out by security, they also shouted, “Stop the torture! Stop the pain! UMass, you are to blame”; “Monkeys feel pain, just like us! Monkeys want to live, just like us!”; and “It’s not science. It’s violence!”

Video footage is available here.

At UMass, experimenters screw electrodes onto monkeys’ skulls, cut into their necks, deprive them of water, restrain them for hours at a time, and torment them in various other ways, purportedly to study human menopause—which marmosets don’t even experience. To simulate menopause, experimenters surgically remove the monkeys’ ovaries, administer hormone-manipulating drugs, and use hand warmers on their bodies to mimic hot flashes.

“While Chancellor Reyes was enjoying himself at a swank London hotel, tiny monkeys with wires threaded through their bodies were suffering in cages,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “Reyes should shut down this shameful laboratory and embrace modern, animal-free research that’s actually relevant to humans.”

PETA has been contacted by numerous UMass alums and donors concerned about the school’s animal welfare violations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture cited the university for severely burning a marmoset with hand warmers as he was recovering from surgery, failing to alert an attending veterinarian to sick animals, and permitting several monkeys to escape and sustain injuries.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.