PETA Offers Oxford Double Monkey’S Value To Call Off Cruel Brain Experiment

For Immediate Release:
22 August 2007

Contact:
Alistair Currie 020 7357 9229, ext 245

Oxford, England – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has sent urgent letters to University of Oxford Vice Chancellor Dr John Hood and notorious Oxford animal experimenter Tipu Aziz, offering to pay the university double their purchase price for a macaque monkey named Felix, who is scheduled to undergo invasive brain experiments and then be killed. Felix is the same primate featured in last November’s BBC documentary Monkeys, Rats and Me, which showed only sanitised images of Felix and contained inflated claims about the experiments’ benefit to humans. Aziz plans to cut into the animal’s skull and induce symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in him by injecting toxic drugs into his brain. PETA wants Oxford to release Felix to a sanctuary and use the payment to conduct humane, reliable non-animal testing only.

PETA isn’t alone in calling for an end to such experiments. A recent PETA-commissioned public opinion poll conducted by YouGov showed that 80 per cent of the British public is in favour of some form of a ban on experiments which cause suffering to animals. Forty-three per cent of respondents think the government should support a ban on experiments causing any suffering to animals, and 34 per cent think the government should support a ban on experiments causing the most suffering to animals.

The proposed experiments on Felix have a substantial “severity limit”, meaning that the government expects that they are likely to cause severe suffering. PETA is calling on Aziz and the university to make public all records on Felix’s condition, including any experiments that may already have been done on him.

“Felix has been exploited twice over by Oxford: first, as a victim of callous and unnecessary experiments, and second, as a cynical public relations tool,”, says PETA Europe senior research and campaign coordinator Alistair Currie. “With 80 per cent of the British public in favour of some form of a ban on experiments, Oxford owes it to the public to tell the whole truth about his suffering and should have the humanity to release him to a sanctuary. Under these exceptional circumstances, we’re willing to pay Oxford to make that happen.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.