Written by PETA
Blasting as many as 30 monkeys with radiation and then imprisoning them for the rest of their lives in tiny steel cages in order to assess how the radiation damages their bodies is wrong on too many levels to count. And it also appears to violate NASA's own guidelines—and federal regulations too.
According to new information obtained by PETA through the Freedom of Information Act, NASA appears to have violated its own grant guidelines and the Code of Federal Regulations by approving the outlay of nearly $2 million in taxpayer money on this cruel and wasteful experiment before they had even been evaluated for scientific validity by one of the facilities where they would be taking place and even though the lead experimenter had missed crucial deadlines for receiving approval for the project.
NASA's guidelines state that grant applications that don't meet the relevant requirements will be "declared noncompliant and declined without review," so PETA has filed a complaint with NASA calling for an immediate investigation and asking for the misguided project to be disqualified from receiving even one penny of our tax dollars.
Join us in stopping this abuse of monkeys before it happens by urging Congress to end the barbaric plan.
Written by Logan Scherer
While the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and privacy advocates play hot potahto over proposed full-body scans at airport security checkpoints, we at PETA say, "Bring 'em on." Pourquoi? Well, several reasons, really:
Metal underwear! That's right: Coming soon to security checkpoints everywhere, TSA employees will get an eyeful of our message to NASA as caring individuals educate TSA employees about NASA's plans to blast as many as 30 monkeys with one huge dose of radiation. The agency will then imprison the animals by themselves in tiny steel cages and subject them to years of tests in order to assess how the radiation damages their brains and bodies. Unlike the rays emitted by airport body scans, this extreme radiation may cause brain tumors and other types of cancer.
Officials at the TSA have already been alerted that PETA's metal underwear is on the way. But we are wondering—will you expose TSA employees to the truth about NASA's experiments on your next flight?
Written by Karin Bennett
Victory Update: Following a year of vigorous campaigning, PETA has learned that government officials have grounded plans for a cruel and ineffective radiation experiment on monkeys. Learn more about this victory for monkeys.
Shouldn't every day be "Bring Your Daughter to the Demo" Day?
This adorable girl joined other proud PETA supporters outside Johnson Space Center in Houston yesterday to urge NASA to ground its misguided plans to torment monkeys in cruel and ineffective radiation experiments. They educated tons of passersby about the more than two dozen monkeys who will be zapped with a large dose of radiation in NASA's crude experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. After the experiment, the monkeys will be shipped off to Harvard's McLean Hospital and forced into years of experiments to assess how the radiation deteriorates their brains and wreaks havoc on their bodies.
Facebook posts speaking out against the cruel experiment have flooded NASA's page—to the point that NASA created a new discussion board solely dedicated to this issue. And we're tweeting at astronauts on the International Space Station (retweet, anyone?) asking them to take action:
@Astro_TJ Pls tell @NASA 2 #savethemonkeys from cruel & ineffective radiation experiments & replace 'em w/ humane/modern research methds!
Join the thousands of people signing PETA's Twitter petition and urging Congress to halt NASA's cruel plan.
Grammar Nazis—(cough) PETA editors (cough)—listen up: It turns out that you might have more in common with monkeys than with your fellow humans.
New research suggests that nonhuman animals are capable of communicating not only among their own kind but also with members of other species. Klaus Zuberbühler, a psychologist at University of St. Andrews in Scotland, spent hundreds of hours listening to the calls of Campbell's monkeys and other species, gradually decoding their language, which is so grammatically sophisticated that it uses suffixes to change the meaning of calls based on the kinds of animals posing a threat. These intricate calls, which are used to pass on complex information about predators and their whereabouts, could be understood by other species of monkeys and even by birds such as hornbills.
We're constantly learning more about the countless ways in which animals of all kinds are brilliant, selfless, and complex. Meanwhile, with all our texts, tweets, and e-mails, we sometimes can't even talk to other humans—let alone other members of other species (um, TISNF, BBIAB, FUBAR—WTF?).
Here's a promising development in the midst of the recession: Charles River Laboratories—one of the world's largest suppliers of animals for experimentation—has announced that it is closing up shop in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. We're hoping these cutbacks mean that the cruel, callous industry giant will continue to suffer.
With its long history of abusing animals, Charles River Laboratories should really be called Hell's Kitchen—its facilities have literally cooked live animals to death. News broke last week of a monkey at a Charles River lab in Reno who was "literally boiled alive" last year after he was left in a cage that was put through one of the facility's high-temperature cage washers (think industrial-sized dishwasher)—despite the fact that lab workers claim that the cage was checked three times (?!). This followed an incident in 2008 when 32 monkeys under Charles River's "care" were baked alive after a thermostat malfunction—even though the procedure in place to alert staff apparently had been followed. No one even discovered the deaths until the following morning. PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture about that negligent oversight, and Charles River was eventually fined $10,000.
Charles River officials attributed all these horrific and easily preventable deaths to "human error." We agree. But the human error responsible is the conscious decision that experimenters and their suppliers make every day to go to work and torment animals. Judging from its desperate downsizing, we foresee a future in which the folks of Charles River will need to find a different path of employment.
Your best friend is hit by a car on a busy freeway, right in front of you. Would you risk your own life to pull him or her to safety? That's exactly what one intrepid dog, did last year when he came to a friend's rescue by risking his own life to run into oncoming highway traffic.
What if you saw a mother and her baby drowning at the beach? Would you rush to their rescue? A dolphin named Moko did when she guided two beached whales into deeper waters off the coast of New Zealand.
Researchers at the University of Paris recently discovered that selflessness among animals like that heroic dog and Moko the dolphin—who put their own lives in danger in order to save others—is even more prevalent than we once thought. The examples of animal altruism are many and moving: Dolphins endanger themselves to rescue their trapped friends, ants help fellow colony members when they're caught in traps or under attack from a predator (though we've known that insects were geniuses for a while now), female fruit bats help each other during labor to ease birth pains—and that's only a quick sampling.
Their selfless acts don't end with their own species either: Dogs will risk their lives to save their guardians, gorillas will care for human children, and one hears story after story about dolphins who come to the aid of swimmers and surfers. If animals can put aside the differences they have with us to help ensure our survival, isn't it about time we did the same?
This year is coming to a close, but we're not done yet: The victories keep pouring, or should I say, roaring in! We recently reported the end of cruel cat labs at Texas Tech and Robert's "retirement" from experiments at the University of Utah. Today, we're thrilled to announce yet another huge victory—this time, for thousands of monkeys.
For months, PETA has been working with an international coalition of animal protection groups to stop the construction of a massive monkey-breeding facility in Guayama, Puerto Rico. Bioculture, a company that sells primates to laboratories, had plans to capture thousands of monkeys from Mauritius and ship them to Puerto Rico so that their offspring could be sold for use in frightening, painful, and deadly experiments in the U.S. and elsewhere.
We have just learned that in response to a lawsuit filed by local citizens and PETA, a Superior Court judge in Puerto Rico has ruled in activists' favor and halted all further construction of the Bioculture facility.
Turns out there are serious problems with Bioculture's applications and permits, including that the construction of the primate facility on the land it currently occupies would be against the law. An investigation by Puerto Rico's Senate Environmental Committee also discovered that Bioculture did not properly address the detrimental impact the project could have on local citizens and their water supplies and land and stated that it "is not sensible" for Puerto Rico to support the project.
Despite this great news, I imagine Bioculture execs trying to regroup, telling themselves, "Where there's a will [for us to cash in on cruelty], there's a way." Help us nix that notion by urging officials to permanently put a stop to this monkey-breeding facility and others in the future.
A few weeks ago, we were thrilled to report that Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) agreed to stop using homeless cats obtained from Odessa Animal Control in deadly medical training exercises, but we weren't sure whether or not Texas Tech had abandoned the practice of shoving plastic tubes down the throats of cats altogether. Well, now it's official: News reports confirm that TTUHSC will no longer use cats for this training! I'm sure our rejected newspaper ads and celebrity support played a big part in securing this towering triumph, but the victory really belongs to the more than 30,000 (!) compassionate people who took action against TTUHSC.
With 2010 fast approaching, we've got a lot to celebrate, but there are still countless animals who are being tortured and killed in experiments. Let's start the New Year by riding on the wave of our TTUHSC success and bringing the same support to the more than two dozen monkeys whom NASA intends to torture by exposing them to massive doses of dangerous radiation. Urge NASA to cancel its cruel plans and instead direct its funds to humane methods of scientific inquiry. Here's to starting 2010 with another victory!
PETA's campaign to stop plans by biological supply company Bioculture to build a monkey-breeding facility in Guayama, Puerto Rico, just got another shot in the arm, courtesy of CNN Headline News' Jane Velez-Mitchell.
In an update to a story that originally broke on Issues With Jane Velez-Mitchell back in July, PETA Vice President Kathy Guillermo appeared on the show along with Puerto Rican Senator Melinda Romero to talk about the controversy surrounding Bioculture's plans to tear wild monkeys out of their native home in Mauritius, lock them up in cages, and sell their offspring to laboratories.
After PETA and other groups started lobbying against the facility, the Puerto Rican Senate launched an investigation and uncovered what appear to be illegalities associated with the company's permit process, including failure to file an environmental impact report and other required reports. The Senate has now condemned Bioculture and vowed to stop the company from setting up shop in Puerto Rico.
Puerto Ricans who are learning about the project thanks to PETA, a coalition of animal groups, and Jane Velez-Mitchell are none too happy about it. Hundreds have turned out to protest the monkey factory farm, and even government officials such as Senator Romero and Guayama Mayor Glorimari Jaime are outspoken in their opposition to it. You can add your voice to theirs by clicking here.
Written by Alisa Mullins
It was a cagey scene outside NASA headquarters in D.C. yesterday when our primates urged NASA to scrap its misguided $1.75 million plan to torment monkeys in radiation experiments. The demonstration was out-of-this-world spectacular, prompting NASA employees to approach our volunteers for some dynamic discussions. No one could walk by these guys without stopping to have a second look:
The more than two dozen monkeys in NASA's crude experiment will be zapped with a massive dose of radiation at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York, and then spend the rest of their lives condemned to a laboratory at Harvard's McLean Hospital where they'll be enlisted in a never-ending series of experiments to assess how the radiation devastates their brains and bodies. NASA has admitted that the radiation is "going to cause some cellular damage." What they really mean is that the monkeys may likely suffer from brain damage, cancer and premature aging.
It goes without saying that you should urge NASA to abandon these abhorrent experiments ASAP.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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