PETA Sends Every Member of Congress Toilet Paper—But There’s a Catch

These Rolls Have a Message: Scaring Monkeys With Rubber Snakes Means Flushing Tax Dollars Down the Toilet—Close This Government Lab

For Immediate Release:
April 24, 2020

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Washington – With toilet paper in high demand during the COVID-19 lockdown, PETA is helping to keep the Hill’s stocks flush—but not with your standard tissue. This week, the group sent all representatives a complimentary specialty roll featuring the message “$36 million down the toilet for NIH monkey fright experiments. Wipe it out!

The rolls refer to “psychology” experiments conducted by National Institutes of Health (NIH) experimenter Elisabeth Murray, in which brain-damaged monkeys are frightened with rubber snakes and spiders, allegedly to study human mental illness. Thirty years of these tests, which have cost taxpayers more than $36 million, have not produced any therapies for humans.

“PETA is sending a hot commodity to members of Congress to alert them to these bizarre and cruel experiments on monkeys,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “While Americans wait for cures to deadly diseases, this country’s premiere health agency is sucking out parts of monkeys’ brains and scaring them with snakes and spiders.”

Members of Congress got the special delivery the same week that a rolling car protest took place outside NIH headquarters and the homes of Murray and NIH Director Francis Collins.

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.

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 Ingrid E. Newkirk

“Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?” READ MORE

— Ingrid E. Newkirk, PETA President and co-author of Animalkind