Let the Monkeys Be Heard

PETA Files a Landmark Lawsuit to Unlock NIMH Victims’ Communications

For 20 torment-filled years, Beamish has been held prisoner in a tiny cell. Instead of exploring forests, savoring delicious fruits and seeds, grooming and playing with friends and family, swimming, and leaping through treetops, this rhesus macaque has been locked alone inside a barren steel cage that provides no comfort, deprived of all freedom, companionship, and joy. Experimenters in Elisabeth Murray’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) laboratory have cut him open, injected him with toxins, destroyed parts of his brain, and repeatedly terrorized him just to record his reactions.

Beamish has no way to contact the outside world, and his jailers ignore his cries for help and expressions of despair. He paces and rocks endlessly, tears out his hair, and slumps over with his head buried in his lap – so despondent that he sometimes doesn’t even respond to noises around him. PETA wants to make Beamish’s voice heard – and the voices of Murray’s other victims, including Sam Smith, Nick Nack, and Guinness, all fellow primates who have been held captive and subjected to extreme suffering in experiments that have no relevance to human health. And in case you’re wondering – yes, some jokester named these monkeys after brands of beer.

Using the Law to Make Animals’ Voices Heard

PETA’s legal team constantly seeks novel ways to apply the law, including a precedent-setting 13th Amendment lawsuit against SeaWorld for enslaving orcas and the historic “monkey selfie” case, which sought to declare Naruto, a crested macaque, the rightful owner of a photo he took and led photographers to donate a portion of their income to wildlife sanctuaries.

Now, PETA is pushing the legal envelope for Beamish and the others experimented on in Murray’s government-funded dungeon by suing NIMH for our right to receive communications from them. The suit cites the First Amendment, which guarantees not only a right to free speech but also a right to listen. This means we are entitled to receive communications from “willing speakers” – as the monkeys in Murray’s laboratory unquestionably are.

Primatologists can interpret these communications, which constitute speech under the law. Our lawsuit marks the first time anyone has sued for the right to listen to imprisoned animals – and, if we are successful, PETA will be able to give people a look at the ugliness their tax dollars fund.

Scaring Monkeys Isn’t Science, and It Costs a Bundle

Murray has received over $50 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to torment monkeys. She carves out sections of their skulls, injects toxins into their brains, and suctions out portions of them, causing permanent damage. She terrorizes the monkeys with the sudden appearance of fake but realistic-looking spiders and snakes – animals they inherently fear. Trapped in cages almost no bigger than their own bodies, some monkeys respond defensively, freezing in abject fear or turning away. Others frantically shake the cage bars. Some grimace or smack their lips – signs of submission in the face of a threat. They are put through this psychological torment over and over again. Then, Murray kills them or “recycles” them into other experiments.

NIMH doesn’t want the public to see any of this. It has refused PETA’s requests for reasonable access to a live-streamed audiovisual feed of the monkeys. And, desperate to conceal its cruelty, NIH – the parent agency of NIMH – has blatantly refused to comply with public information laws, banned a PETA representative from its public campus, and censored speech on its public social media pages (which a federal court declared unconstitutional, following another PETA lawsuit).

We’re determined to let the monkeys’ voices be heard – and to share their stories with the world. It will be a hard fight, but we are ready! US readers, ask your members of Congress to cut off NIH funding to Murray’s monkey fright experiments and close her laboratory.