VICTORY! Miserable UMass Marmoset Laboratory Closes Following Four-Year PETA Campaign
For Immediate Release:
July 31, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
In a major victory for animals and good science, a massive PETA campaign has shut down the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) laboratory of Agnès Lacreuse, ending the pointless torment of marmosets as well as the waste of federal funding.
Lacreuse spent more than ten years and more than $6 million in federal money performing scientifically-flawed menopause experiments on marmosets, a condition the monkeys cannot naturally experience. A message on the laboratory’s website announced its closure.
PETA exposed the experiments in 2021 and since then has waged an active campaign with dozens of protests, a massive ad campaign, lawsuits, disruption of fundraising events and conferences, among other actions. More than 160,000 supporters sent emails to the National Institutes of Health calling for an end to funding, and 1.3 million messages were sent to UMass. Actors Daisy Ridley, Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) and actor Kate del Castillo called for the lab to close. Actor and Massachusetts native Casey Affleck and his mother Chris Anne Boldt led a news conference exposing the pointlessness of the experiments and calling for an end to them.
In 2022, PETA filed a lawsuit against UMass to obtain public records from Lacreuse’s laboratory. The lawsuit was settled in PETA’s favor, and UMass is turning over all requested documentation and paying PETA $50,000 in partial compensation for legal fees. Videos from inside the now-closed laboratory are expected to be turned over to PETA any day now.
“We were determined to close this laboratory and end the torture of these tiny monkeys and we did,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Lacreuse’s reign of terror is over.”
In Lacreuse’s laboratory, staff drilled holes in marmosets’skulls to implant electrodes, cut into their necks, and threaded wires through their bodies, among other cruel, invasive procedures. When Lacreuse finished with the marmosets, they were killed and dissected. In nature, marmosets live in cooperative groups high up in the canopies of rainforests, where they groom each other, huddle affectionately, share food, and care for their babies.
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.
