Real Time Host Joins PETA’s Call to End Barbaric Experiments in School’s Labs
Today, Columbia University staffers were greeted with an unexpected e-mail message when they booted up their office computers: a personal note from Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time, urging them to join PETA’s campaign to permanently stop grotesque experiments on primates in Columbia’s research laboratories. Using his trademark biting sarcasm, Maher directs Columbia employees to PETA’s Web site ColumbiaCruelty.com to learn more about the experiments, which, he says, “[e]ven Poe in a morphine-induced nightmare couldn’t have dreamed up.”
“Tossing millions of dollars of tax money out the window is one thing—think searching for ice on Mars,” writes Maher, “but wasting money to cause strokes in, disfigure, and terrorize animals puts Columbia in an ugly and embarrassing position. I’m asking Columbia to stop this now and forever, and I’m asking you to join me.”
In one experiment, which has been suspended but not terminated, baboons are immobilized in restraint devices, their eyeballs are removed, and clamps are inserted through their eye sockets to block off blood vessels in order to induce strokes. In another, metal tubes are implanted into the skulls of female rhesus monkeys to study the effects of stress on the animals’ menstrual cycles. In a third, pregnant baboons are pumped full of nicotine and morphine, after which experimenters cut into the animals’ fetuses. PETA learned about the experiments from a veterinarian who witnessed the atrocities and left Columbia in disgust.
Maher’s e-mail message is the latest salvo in PETA’s campaign to stop the experiments, which has also included “dogging” Columbia President Lee Bollinger with protests as he tours the U.S. and Asia to speak at alumni fundraisers. PETA has also filed a formal complaint with the New York County District Attorney’s Office, asking that criminal charges for cruelty to animals be brought against the experimenters.
Broadcast-quality footage of animals inside Columbia’s laboratories is available. For more information, please visit ColumbiaCruelty.com. The complete text of Bill Maher’s e-mail message to Columbia University employees follows.
