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Dr. Alka Chandna 757-622-7382  

Acting on behalf of PETA, actor Ally Sheedy has fired off a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger in support of a veterinarian who blew the whistle on three crude experiments on primates that she had witnessed in the school’s labs. One of the experiments, two of which are ongoing, involves implanting heavy metal pipes into female rhesus monkeys’ skulls to study the connection between stress and the menstrual cycle. Sheedy wants the experiments stopped not only because they address the problem in an inefficient and ineffective manner, but also because the monkey subjects are given no post-operative painkillers and die from neglect. One monkey, who was caged in the laboratory for nine years, was photographed with blood running down her face long after she had come out of anesthesia.

PETA conducted an investigation into Columbia’s labs after Dr. Catherine Dell’Orto, a veterinarian who worked in the labs, blew the whistle on the animal abuse that she had witnessed. Dell’Orto’s efforts to improve conditions in the university’s laboratories through internal channels met with resistance and retaliation—she was ignored, shunned, and ostracized and then denied entry to the primate facilities. Millions of dollars designated for women’s health issues have been commandeered by Columbia experimenter Michel Ferin and squandered on cruel, irrelevant animal experiments; meanwhile, women who suffer extreme stress during their menstrual cycles are left without the resources to obtain the medical care that they need.

In another mutilating procedure, experimenters cut into fetuses in the wombs of nicotine-addicted baboons, despite the fact that the harmful effects of nicotine on developing babies are well known. Although the school has suspended one useless experiment—in which baboons’ left eyes were carved out and clamps were inserted via the empty sockets to cut off the blood supply to the animals’ brains and induce strokes—PETA is demanding a permanent end to it and the two other experiments.

"As a proud New Yorker and neighbor of the Columbia campus, I urge you to do everything in your power to address these allegations promptly," writes Sheedy. "They cast a dark shadow on the face of Columbia and on our great city."

Broadcast-quality footage of animals in Columbia’s laboratories is available. For more information, please visit PETA’s Web site ColumbiaCruelty.com.

Ally Sheedy’s letter to Columbia President Lee Bollinger is available upon request.