PETA Honors Former Animal Experimenter Turned Animal Rights Advocate With a Trailblazing Advocacy Award
“There is no research more valuable than our own integrity and ethical coherence, and our treatment of animals is a direct reflection of our values toward life and one another.” These are the powerful words of Dr. John Gluck, a former animal experimenter turned trailblazing animal rights advocate. PETA is honoring the University of New Mexico (UNM) emeritus professor of psychology with an award for his courageous work on behalf of our fellow animals.
PETA Is Applauding Gluck for Sharing His Story
Gluck is an invaluable ally with respect to our work to end archaic experiments on monkeys, which he witnessed firsthand as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in the ’60s.
“I remember many times seeing these monkeys in the experimental apparatus and looking so helpless and confused and frightened. It got me thinking … who are these beings? … [T]here came a time when I couldn’t chase the questions away anymore.”
—Dr. John Gluck
The primate laboratory in which Gluck began his career normalized the imprisonment and torture of monkeys—but for him, this all changed when he developed a connection to the sensitive, intelligent animals. Understanding that our fellow primates have complex emotions, behavior, and social relationships—for example, female rhesus macaques “coo” at babies to soothe them—set him on a different path, one of promoting ethical research.
“[W]e have consistently underestimated animals’ mental complexity and pain sensitivity, and therefore the potential for harm. The obvious question is why the harms experienced by these animals, which will be at least similar to humans, fail to matter? How did being a different member of the primate grouping that includes humans automatically alter the moral universe?”
—Dr. John Gluck
Gluck Continues to Be an Important Voice Against Experiments on Animals
In addition to spending years working within UNM to encourage his colleagues to explore humane research, Gluck documented his journey from being an animal experimenter to advocating for animals in his book Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals. He also joined PETA’s call to end experiments on our fellow animals, including in our successful campaign to end a series of maternal deprivation experiments on baby monkeys at the National Institutes of Health and our #IStoppedYouCanToo campaign, which pushes experimenters to challenge the status quo that keeps hundreds of thousands of animals trapped in laboratories and subjected to pointless and cruel procedures. Join PETA and animal rights advocates like Gluck in calling for an end to cruel experiments on monkeys:
