University of Connecticut: Free the Primates!
Students at the University of Connecticut (UConn) have spearheaded a dynamic campaign to free four rhesus macaque monkeys who are currently being used in painful experiments. The UConn Animal Rights Club is also calling on the school to permanently end all primate experimentation at university-affiliated facilities.
UConn’s David Waitzman drills holes in the skulls of the monkeys and implants electrodes in their brains to record which portions of the brain are activated during eye movement. The monkeys are deprived of food and water for days at a time as part of their “training.” Lawrence Hansen, a neuropathologist at the University of California in San Diego, described experiments similar to Waitzman’s as “experiments that … deliver … so much suffering to higher primates for so comparatively little scientific gain.”
UConn has an abysmal animal welfare record. In 2002, the university admitted to more than 50 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and agreed to pay $129,500 in fines. Inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited egregious cases of abuse inside the university’s labs, including improper care, inadequate veterinary attention, and many animals’ inhumane deaths. One of the more horrific examples involved rabbits who did not receive adequate veterinary care after their spinal cords were severed.
Connecticut residents, UConn students, and UConn alumni can register their opposition to UConn’s primate experiments by signing the UConn Animal Rights Club’s online petition and calling for the release of the monkeys and for a permanent end to primate experimentation at all UConn-affiliated facilities.
Concerned people everywhere can help by sending polite letters to University of Connecticut President Philip E. Austin and University Board of Trustees President Jodi Rell.
Read PETA’s letter to Austin.
Read more about primate experimentation.
Read about the global coalition of animal protection groups that is calling for an end to the use of primates in experimentation.
