Casey Affleck and His Mom Lead PETA Protest Against Monkey Menopause Experiments at UMass

For Immediate Release:
September 10, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

On Monday morning, Oscar winner Casey Affleck and his mother, Chris Anne Boldt, will join PETA at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst (UMass) to demand an end to the school’s deadly experiments on marmosets that are supposedly to study menopause, a condition that these primates do not experience. The World to Come star will speak at a news conference before marching to the laboratory to protest.

When:    Monday, September 13, 11:30 a.m., with the protest to follow. Media arrival at 11:15 a.m.

Where:    The courtyard behind the university’s Student Union

“Marmosets aren’t tiny humans, and cutting them up leads to nothing but misery and death,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “UMass remains in the dark ages of science and needs to shut down this laboratory and modernize its research program immediately.”

At UMass, experimenters zip-tie frightened marmosets into restraining devices, drill into their skulls and implant electrodes, cut open their necks to expose muscle, and thread electrode leads from the scalp and neck to the abdomen. To mimic “hot flashes” in the marmosets, experimenters cut out their ovaries and heat the animals with hand warmers, like those placed in mittens during wintertime.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.