Casey Affleck Urges Mass. Lawmakers to Save Baby Monkeys Ahead of Landmark Bill Hearing

For Immediate Release:
July 28, 2025

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Boston –

Casey Affleck sent a letter to legislators in his native Massachusetts today, urging Senator Lydia Edwards and Representative Michael S. Day to support a groundbreaking new bill that would prohibit animal experimenters from tearing baby monkeys away from their mothers ahead of its upcoming committee hearing on July 29.

“As a parent myself, and someone who is close to my own mom, I find these experiments especially devastating,” Affleck writes. “As disgusted as I am to learn that this was happening at all, I am grateful that Massachusetts leadership is working to make sure this horrific practice never happens again in the state.”

The bill comes after PETA exposed Harvard Medical School experimenter Margaret Livingstone’s cruel tests, in which newborn monkeys were ripped from their mothers and forced to wear goggles that simulated disorienting strobe lights for the first 18 months of their lives. Livingstone had also sewn other monkeys’ eyes shut, and after years of torment, killed and dissected many of the animals. Following a nearly three-year PETA campaign, federal funding for Livingstone’s experiments was recently terminated, but without a law on the books banning the ghastly tests, they could happen again.

Livingstone spent 40 years and more than $33 million terrifying monkeys and other animals in agonizing experiments despite never producing a single treatment or cure for humans.

This photo, taken in Livingstone’s lab, appears in a publication in which she acknowledges that mother monkeys become distressed when their babies are stolen from them. Credit: Figure 3 in Triggers for Mother Love | Margaret S. Livingstone | CC BY-NC-ND

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out thatEvery Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

Affleck’s letter to Sen. Edwards and Rep. Day follows.

Dear Senator Edwards and Representative Day,

I am writing to urge you to lend your full support to the groundbreaking bill (H.1948, S.1167) recently introduced in the Massachusetts legislature to protect infant primates from the devastation of being taken away from their mothers for experimentation. As a parent myself and someone who is close to my own mom, I find these sorts of experiments especially devastating.

I recently learned from PETA that one laboratory in Massachusetts was removing infant rhesus macaques from their mothers at birth for the sole purpose of deliberately interfering with their visual development by sewing the baby monkeys’ eyelids shut or forcing them to live in strobe-like lighting conditions. Many of these young monkeys were then killed and dissected. As disgusted as I am to learn this was happening at all, I am grateful that Massachusetts leadership is working to make sure this horrific practice never happens again in the state.

I applaud you both and the other Massachusetts legislators working to protect infant monkeys in the state of Massachusetts. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Casey Affleck