Seattle Monkey Lab Targeted in New PETA Video From ‘American Psycho’ Director Mary Harron
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Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7385
In a new, hair-raising PETA video, horror director Mary Harron exposes other violent predators—experimenters who mutilate and kill monkeys in cruel laboratory tests—in time for the 25th anniversary of her cult classic American Psycho.
The terrifying TV spot debuts today in Seattle, targeting the federally funded Washington National Primate Research Center at the University of Washington, and will run on Adult Swim, MTV, and TV Land through May 27.
The video shows a human strapped to a chair in a barred prison cell. A circular metal device has been screwed into the victim’s head, immobilizing it. A man in a lab coat and surgical mask enters. Pupils dilate. A needle plunges. Screams ring out as a power drill bores into the skull, and there’s a sudden cut to an image of a real monkey in a real laboratory enduring the same kind of invasive torment.
A screen capture from Mary Harron’s new PETA video.
“I’m working with PETA to call for an end to the use of monkeys and other animals in laboratories, and I hope this video shines a light on the immense pain that experimenters inflict on tens of millions of animals every year,” Harron says.
A recent PETA study analyzing animal welfare violations at the 20 universities nationwide that received the most funding from the National Institutes of Health identified the University of Washington and its associated primate center as the second-worst offender, with a whopping 29 violations in two years.
Monkeys at the primate center have been strangled, starved, and mauled to death by other stressed monkeys, choked on their vomit, or died from uncontrolled diarrheal diseases. Recently, experimenter Fritzie Arce-McShane blasted a monkey with so much unauthorized radiation that his body broke down, and he suffered for weeks before he was killed.
In nature, monkeys form deep emotional bonds with their family members. Those born in laboratories are often torn from their anguished mothers, sometimes within just days of birth, and confined to barren steel cages.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
