More Than 160 Primates Are Poisoned, Addicted, Mutilated, and Killed in School's Laboratories

For Immediate Release:
October 15, 2008

Contact:
Justin Goodman 757-622-7382

New Haven, Conn. -- PETA members wearing monkey masks will unfurl a banner that reads, "Yale Murders Monkeys," from the Route 34 overpass on College Street in New Haven on Thursday to protest the university's painful and deadly experiments on primates. The action is one of many taking place across the country this week to draw attention to the plight of the tens of thousands of primates imprisoned in U.S. laboratories and to mark National Primate Liberation Week.

According to the most recent reports, more than 160 primates are locked up in Yale's laboratories. The monkeys spend their lives confined to steel cages in which they are mutilated, injected with poisons, and forced to become addicted to drugs before they are killed--all at taxpayers' expense. The following are just some of the things that experimenters are doing at Yale:

· Injecting neurotoxins into monkeys' brains, causing head and limb tremors and difficulty eating and moving
· Addicting monkeys to PCP to induce schizophrenia-like brain and behavior changes
· Killing pregnant monkeys and removing their fetuses so that experimenters can cut out their brains
· Addicting monkeys to nicotine by giving them the equivalent of smoking 17 packs of cigarettes per day

"If animal experimenters at Yale committed these cruel, worthless acts outside of their secretive laboratories, they'd be thrown in jail," says PETA Director of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "Monkeys are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who suffer greatly in labs. Imprisoning, torturing, and killing them for any reason is unjustifiable."

Where: Route 34 overpass (on College Street between George and Cedar), New Haven
When: Thursday, October 16, 2 p.m.

For more information, please visit PETA's Web site StopAnimalTests.com.