Victory! Harvard Baby Monkey Tormenter Exposed by PETA Just Lost NIH Funding

HUGE victory! In a massive win for animals, the lights have finally gone out on Margaret Livingstone’s dark experiments on baby monkeys after years of sustained pressure from PETA and thousands of supporters like you.

After 31 months of PETA’s relentless campaigning, and emails and phone calls from hundreds of thousands of supporters, Livingstone’s grim experiments on baby monkeys were included late today on Harvard University’s list of canceled federal grants.

PETA first exposed Harvard’s monkey experiments in the fall of 2022, publicizing that Livingstone tore baby monkeys away from their mothers and sewed their eyelids shut for an entire year. We also exposed Harvard for forcing baby monkeys to wear goggles that simulated disorienting strobe lights for the first 18 months of their lives. Other monkeys were “face-deprived,” only interacting with humans wearing welding masks, so experimenters could see what would happen to monkeys who never saw a face, human or monkey.

One monkey strangled to death on the cloth she was given in place of her mother. Others had their heads cut into so electrodes could be surgically implanted. After years of torment, she killed and dissected many of the animals.

Livingstone spent nearly 40 years and tens of millions of dollars deliberately altering baby monkeys’ visual development in this way, taking them from their mothers at birth, placing them alone inside metal cages, and only giving them a piece of cloth to cling to.

PETA rallied hundreds of thousands of supporters to send emails and letters and make phone calls, demanding that this end.

PETA wrote to the National Institutes of Health, legislators, and Harvard leadership and donors, urging them to help these baby monkeys. We placed ads and postered Harvard’s campuses, among other actions.

Finally, the dam broke.

This victory follows NIH’s landmark decision recently to shift funding away from cruel and outdated experiments on animals and instead prioritize non-animal research methods. NIH’s plan incorporates steps from PETA’s Research Modernization NOW—a detailed roadmap for replacing experiments on animals with superior, human-relevant alternatives.

Next on the Chopping Block

Experimenters at the seven national primate research centers have tormented and killed hundreds of thousands of monkeys while siphoning billions of dollars from taxpayers for experiments that have consistently failed to deliver safe and effective vaccines or cures.

Please join our call to shut down these pits of misery: