PETA Launch Graphic Ad Showing ‘The Real Cost Of Animal Experimentation’

2.6 Million Animals Sidelined by Diversionary Government and Industry ‘Shoot the Messenger’ Tactics

For Immediate Release:
29 July 2004

Contact:
Andrew Butler 020 7357 9229, ext 230
Dawn Carr 020 7357 9229, ext 224

London – Today, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will release a graphic ad showing Malish, a primate used in brain research, with blood running down his face, the top of his skull cut off and electrodes implanted in his brain with the tagline “This Is the Real Cost of Animal Experimentation … Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Different”.

Malish was separated from his mother when he was only 10 months old and put in a cage by himself. Malish was then experimented on for three years, during which he was kept in a state of constant thirst and immobilised for long periods, his head screwed to a chair. The shelved primate-testing facility in Cambridge would have conducted brain research on primates like Malish. The proposed animal-testing facility in Oxford may well do the same.

For years, animal rights groups and activists have called for increased transparency and accountability from those involved in animal experimentation and for meaningful moves toward non-animal testing methodologies in the form of sustained and substantial funding from both government and industry, yet at every turn, animal advocates have encountered stony silence or half-hearted promises.

“Animals in laboratories suffer through experiments in which they are poisoned, shocked, infected and dissected, often without even an analgesic to dull their pain or a kind word to see them through”, says PETA Director Dawn Carr. “They are the victims of violence perpetrated against them only because, as with tortured Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, they are not seen to be exactly like their oppressors, so their pain and fear have been set aside as inconsequential.”

Much of the activity the government and animal-testing industries seek to curb is already illegal. New laws will not stop people from speaking up for animals suffering in laboratories. Rather than wasting even more money and pushing forward with yet another animal-testing facility, it is time to tackle this issue at its root, with proper government and private-sector funding of non-animal testing methodologies, such as DNA research, computers programmed with human data that render results in the blink of an eye, and human cell work that far outpaces tests on caged monkeys. This is the only realistic way forward, even for those in the animal-experimentation industry.

To see the ad and view video footage of the experiments conducted on Malish, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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