PETA Sues NIH, NIMH in Groundbreaking First Amendment Lawsuit

PETA is again pushing the legal envelope with a groundbreaking First Amendment lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Mental Health.

In the suit, PETA seeks to enforce our First Amendment right to receive communications from willing speakers, including the macaques Beamish, Sam Smith, Nick Nack, and Guinness—all fellow primates imprisoned in the government laboratory of experimenter Elisabeth Murray.

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees not only a right to free speech but also a right to listen. In other words, the right to receive communications from willing speakers, as the monkeys undoubtedly are. This right exists even where the speaker may not have the right to speak under the Constitution.

Public laboratory records show that, for years, Beamish, Sam Smith, and other monkeys have been imprisoned alone in barren steel cages with no way to contact the outside world while experimenters cut them open, inject them with toxins, and destroy parts of their brains.

Their jailers may ignore their clear communication, including expressions of agony and despair, but we have the right to receive it.

No lawsuit has ever tried to enforce the constitutional right to receive communications from animals who are undoubtedly willing speakers.

How We Got Here

The suit comes after both federal agencies refused PETA’s request for reasonable, uncensored, and unedited access to a live-streamed audiovisual feed of the monkeys in Murray’s laboratory to receive the macaques’ communications and exercise our First Amendment right to listen.

PETA asks the court to declare that NIH’s refusal to allow the requested access violates the First Amendment and requires the agencies to provide constitutionally sufficient methods for PETA to receive the monkeys’ communications.

What This Means

Vindicating our right to listen to the macaques and other animals imprisoned in government laboratories will provide vital information to help us advocate for their rights, educate the public about their suffering, and improve transparency in government laboratories generally.

PETA’s complaint is accompanied by declarations about macaques and their communications, including specific insight into Beamish, Sam Smith, Nick Nack, and Guinness from primate experts Dr. Agustín Fuentes, a Princeton University professor with expertise in macaques’ interactions with humans, and Dr. Liz Tyson, director of Born Free USA’s primate sanctuary and an Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics fellow with a doctorate in animal welfare law from the University of Essex.

Communication Takes Many Forms

Monkeys, including macaques, communicate in many ways and use a range of different signals. Their abilities to communicate with humans have been studied by scientists for years, and their communications—facial expressions, body language, gestures, and vocalizations such as screams, calls, and other sounds—can be interpreted to differing degrees by both laypersons and experts.

Field studies of Japanese macaques, for example, show that this species uses different dialects depending on where they live. Other studies show Campbell’s monkeys in Africa can use suffixes to change the meaning of certain calls.

Rhesus macaques, including those in Murray’s laboratory, can communicate through lip-smacking or puckering, teeth-chattering, grimacing, teeth-baring, open-mouth yawns, and more.

In Murray’s laboratory, where macaques are primarily confined to barren metal cages, the animals frequently tear their hair out due to stress and have been documented, in public laboratory records, pacing and rocking to cope with extreme stress, loneliness, and boredom. Many have metal head posts or other equipment implanted in their skulls, and some have suffered from repeated infections, vomiting, or excessive bleeding after surgeries. The National Institute of Mental Health funds Murray’s experiments with taxpayer money.

What You Can Do

Let the National Institute of Mental Health know that you won’t stand for this cruelty. Urge the agency to end these monkey fright experiments and close down Murray’s laboratory now!