PETA video shows baby monkeys torn away from their mothers, such as those at the UW Primate Center

For immediate release:
May 18, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Seattle – Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) refuses to publish video footage from its secret children’s laboratory, but PETA has sued to obtain it and released new video identification of similar cells and experiments in other primate laboratories. It shows the devastating effect of ripping baby monkeys away from their mothers and experimenting with them.

The video also shows John Gluck, Ph.D., a retired primate experimenter who trained in controversial Harry Harlow’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and who now condemns such experiments. Harlow was first announced and then heavily criticized for experiments in which he separated newborn monkeys from their mothers and raised them alone in total darkness, sometimes with only cloth-covered wires to cling to, causing destructive physical and mental frustration for life.

Harlow’s former students set up a similar laboratory at the University of Washington decades ago, where they kept fragile baby monkeys without a mother and without friends to see how deprivation affected their bodies and their ability to learn and connect. To this day, WaNPRC separates newborn monkeys from their mothers.

“Newborns are placed in an incubator for the first few days of life and then placed in a small cage in which they are kept alone, with hanging cloth to replace their real mother,” explains Gluck in the video. “These manipulations are so damaging to many behavioral and physiological systems that the work should not be repeated.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t speak out when the enterprise was launched,” concludes Gluck. Time to shut down Washington National Primate Research Center.

Gluck is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico and Lecturer at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

WaNPRC is currently under investigation by two federal agencies and the Washington Department of Agriculture for allowing numerous monkeys to escape and other issues. PETA notes that Harvard University announced the closure of its New England Primate Research Center in 2013, given the many animal welfare violations, the difficulty of keeping monkeys in laboratories, and the future of its research priorities.

PETA opposes arrogance, the worldview of supporters of human superiority. For more information visit PETA.org or subscribe to the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…