PETA Mobile Video Billboard Showing Monkeys in UW Labs to Troll School Officials’ Neighborhoods

For Immediate Release:
August 6, 2021

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

Tomorrow, University of Washington (UW) officials President Ana Mari Cauce and School of Pharmacy Dean Sean Sullivan will wake up to a PETA mobile video billboard rolling through their neighborhoods, urging them to close the infamous Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC). The action is the latest step in PETA’s campaign exposing cruelty and violations at the federally funded facility, which tears infant monkeys away from their mothers and experiments on them.

The video compilation includes footage showing the monkeys at WaNPRC inside kitchen cabinet–size cages, which are their only homes, and the devastating effects of long-term confinement and social isolation.

It also features John Gluck, Ph.D., a former primate experimenter who trained in the laboratory of the controversial Harry Harlow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and who now condemns such experiments.

“UW’s primate laboratory has stolen thousands of monkeys’ lives and left babies scarred, without producing any significant medical advances,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA’s billboard reflects growing opposition to the primate center’s nearly six-decade reign of terror and the urgent need for it to shut down forever.”

Monkeys at the WaNPRC have died from strangulation, starvation, dehydration, veterinary error, and choking on their own vomit. The facility was recently cited for repeatedly allowing monkeys to escape and be injured. It has laid off multiple staff members, including ones responsible for taking care of the monkeys, and has had eight directors in 10 years. In an apparent conflict of interest, UW’s animal experimentation oversight committee includes the director of a pro–animal experimentation organization that receives significant contributions from UW.

Harvard University announced the shutdown of its New England National Primate Research Center in 2013 after looking critically at its multiple animal welfare violations, the difficulty of providing monkeys in laboratories with even a modicum of humane treatment, and the future of its research priorities—and PETA is calling on UW to do the same.

According to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, a majority of Americans oppose all experiments on animals. Studies show that 90% of basic research, most of which involves animals, fails to lead to treatments for humans.

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.