Well, we took a week off last week ’cuz, to be frank, researching these people can really ruin my Fridays sometimes—and if there was ever a man who could suck all the fun out of your weekend, it’s our latest winner (by a margin of 15-1!), Hagai Bergman, who enjoys romantic movies, long walks on the beach, and drilling holes into monkeys’ brains while they scream for mercy.

While Hagai shuffles into his rightful place as this week’s Vilest Vivisector, it’s time to turn our attention to the new blood. This week, we’ve got two researchers for you from the Yerkes Center at Emory University who are studying the psychology of despair the only way they know how … by inflicting it! So here it is—a PETA Files exclusive sneak peek into the very darkest reaches of two twisted human souls … it’s time to cast your vote for the next Vivisector of the Week!

Stuart Zola, Emory University. Emory/Creative Commons For the past 3 years, Stuart Zola, who is the director of Emory’s Yerkes Primate Research Center, has been refining his theories about what makes baby monkeys suffer the most. He’s tried slicing into their brains, and he’s tried tying them to restraint chairs for hours on end. He’s even spent some of the $2.2 million in taxpayer money he’s received for these experiments to turn the young primates into drug addicts in the hopes of finding out whether drug-addiction has adverse effects on the memory (yes, Stuart, it does). But Zola’s curiosity about early-life trauma in monkeys knows no bounds! If you’d like to see this relentless dedication to sadism given its due, be sure to cast your vote for Stuart Zola now!

Maria Sanchez, Emory University. Emory/Creative Commons Maria del Mar Sanchez has the dubious honor of being our first female candidate for Vivisector of the Week, and—doubtless mindful of the weighty implications that this carries for her gender—she’s gone out of her way to show that natural compassion and maternal instincts mean absolutely nothing to her. A mother herself, Sanchez conducts experiments in which infant primates are taken from their mothers again and again, giving rise to extreme depression in the monkeys. Baby monkeys taken from their mothers are so desperate that they will cry out more than 200 times in 30 minutes. To elect our very first female Vivisector of the Week, cast your vote for Maria Sanchez!

Will Mrs. Sanchez’s diabolical role as a parent who has devoted her life to wrenching infants from their mothers be enough to edge out the sadistic brain butcher Stuart Zola? Find out next week* when we crown the very latest Vivisector of the Week!

*The PETA Files cannot guarantee that they will remember to do this next week.

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What I love about this story is not just the big black eye to Covance's PR machine in Madison (where the company has a high profile due to its massive animal-experimentation lab outside the city), but the fact that Steinem explicitly puts animal rights in the wider context of social justice. She situates the issue, as it should be, alongside the broader issue of fighting the oppressive mentality that companies like Covance share with domestic abusers or any perpetrators of violence who believe that "might makes right."

Hopefully, this will be food for thought for all the people who comment on this blog wondering why animal rights people don't do more to fight other forms of oppression. The point is that people who care about animal rights, like Gloria Steinem, just have a better view of the big picture. Injustice and violence needs to be stamped out wherever it crops up—and no matter who the victims are.

Remember the TV show Blossom from way back in the day? Well, the little sister on the show, Courtney Chase, reportedly took part in a pretty amazing animal rescue last week.

Last Monday, when Courtney and her older sister Ashley saw their neighbor allegedly trying to drown his eight month old Shih Tzu in a tub for defecating on the carpet, the sisters intervened. Reportedly, they entered the neighbor’s apartment, grabbed the dog, gave him mouth-to- mouth resuscitation, and rushed him to the vet, where he is recuperating.

Felony cruelty to animals charges have been filed against the neighbor and he faces up to three years in prison. I’ll keep you posted if more info becomes available.

Courtney Chase then	Courtney Chase now
ChildStarlets/Creative Commons	imdb/Creative Commons

Way to go Courtney and Ashley!

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Unfortunately, this doesn't amount to an outright ban on foie gras sales in the city, but it's a hell of a good start. Most of the foie gras in England is imported from France, which has declared the product "part of the cultural and gastronomic patrimony" — a very sophisticated French way of saying "we don't give a crap about anything". The good folks in PETA Europe are working hard to push other cities to follow York's example, so I'll keep you posted on how that goes, and we'll see what the French foie gras producers have to say about their ludicrous "gastronomic patrimony" once compassionate people throughout Europe send their sales plummeting.

Congratulations to York and to everyone who helped to work on this campaign!

Brattleboro, Vermont, is well-known for its “unique” public nudity laws, so a couple of brave PETA members went down there last week to test them out with a “Bare Skin, Don’t Wear Skin” demonstration. Check out the great pics below, and, as soon as you (a) turn 18 and (b) get home from work, click here to check out the demonstration from, um, behind.

There aren’t many folks in America who don’t at least know there’s controversy surrounding circuses that use animals. So it always surprises me when a company like Denny’s jumps into bed with the animal abusing freak show that is Ringling Bros. circus. But, it surprised me even more when Denny’s CEO Nelson Marchioli refused to even talk with us about the issue, despite having been provided with an abundance of documentation, including videotapes, government documents, and testimony from former Ringling employees.

We wrote, we called, we called, and we called again, but Mr. Marchioli just wasn’t interested in joining more compassionate companies like General Mills, Burger King, Liz Claiborne, MasterCard, Visa, Ford Motor Company, and Sears, Roebuck and Co., all of whom ended their sponsorships of circuses that use animals. So, we’re proud to launch our new Web site: DeadlyDennys.com. Apparently Marchioli is OK with the beatings, neglect, confinement, and death that go on behind the scenes at Ringling, but I have a feeling his customers and investors won’t take too kindly to Denny’s family-friendly image being associated with such abuse.

So, check out DeadlyDennys.com, and be sure to share it with everyone you know. And oh, here is the link to contact Denny’s directly, to let them know what you think of their support of cruelty.

Update: There was a great investigative report on this issue that was on KHOU-TV this week. Check it out here.

Our Captive Animals department has been working overtime on a case involving two elephants named Tina and Jewel. The elephants belong to Cole Bros., a circus that was assessed a $10,000 penalty by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for abusing elephants with bullhooks. To make a long story short, after confirming a whistleblower report stating that Jewel was emaciated, we filed a complaint with the USDA, leading to the removal of both elephants from the road. But now they are being housed at an unapproved facility in TX, and according to one recent inspection, an elephant expert “determined that both elephants showed an alarming amount of weight loss.”

Cole Bros. is leasing the elephants to the family that formerly operated the King Royal Circus, until its USDA license was permanently revoked when a young African elephant named Heather was found dead in a crowded, overheated trailer. Lovely.

Please help us convince the USDA to confiscate the elephants and relocate them to The Elephant Sanctuary, where they can receive proper nourishment and veterinary care from qualified elephant caretakers. You can take action here.