‘Monkeys’ in Coffins to Protest Neuroscience Convention
PETA Will Call Out Cruel and Deadly Experiments on Primates
For Immediate Release:
October 19, 2019
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
The Society for Neuroscience convention will face a funereal protest on Monday, when three PETA members wearing monkey masks will lie in coffins next to signs proclaiming, “If You Call It ‘Medical Research,’ You Can Get Away With Murder.” The protest will occur during a panel sponsored by the notorious National Primate Research Centers (NPRC), which imprison tens of thousands of monkeys in their seven massive facilities across the country—all of which have been cited repeatedly for violating minimal animal welfare laws. See video footage of PETA’s investigation of the Oregon National Primate Research Center here.
When: Monday, October 21, 11:45 a.m.
Where: Outside the McCormick Place Convention Center, 2301 S. Martin Luther King Dr. (at the intersection with E. McCormick Square), Chicago
“Taking newborn monkeys away from their mothers, cutting into their skulls, poisoning them, and depriving them of water and food for long periods would be considered criminal cruelty anywhere except in a laboratory, where no experiment, no matter how painful, is prohibited by law,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on America’s neuroscientists to stop wasting critical research dollars on painful tests that teach us nothing about human health and to switch to cutting-edge, animal-free methods.”
In recent experiments at NPRC facilities, experimenters have injected a toxin into newborn monkeys’ eye muscles; injected marmoset monkeys with a neurotoxin to induce “Parkinson’s-like symptoms,” including tremors, drooling or frothing, and immobility; and fed pregnant Japanese macaques a high-fat diet, then killed their offspring at 13 —to 14 months of age and dissected their brains. None of these experiments has led to a treatment or cure for diseases in humans.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
