Iggy Pop Speaks Up for Monkeys Used in Experiments

Posted by on September 15, 2020 | Permalink

“Anyone can see the pain and terror in these monkeys’ eyes. No one should have to suffer like this,” says Iggy Pop, who has just donated his song “Free” to PETA US for a new video.

The video shines a spotlight on the suffering of monkeys subjected to psychological and physical torment in laboratories.

It features footage from PETA US investigations into a National Institutes of Health (NIH) experimenter’s painful, invasive, and deadly “monkey fright” tests. The experimenters inflict permanent and traumatic brain damage on monkeys and then terrorise them with fake snakes and spiders.

It also includes footage from an exposé into University of Massachusetts–Amherst solitary confinement experiments and NIH maternal deprivation experiments, in which distraught monkeys were driven insane. In these experiments, primates were kept in small, barren cages and baby monkeys were torn away from their mothers, respectively.

Tests by notorious multibillion-dollar “laboratory-for-hire” Covance are also featured in the video.

Experimenting on Animals Is Bad Science

Animal experiments are not only relentlessly cruel to animals but also highly ineffective. The reason for this is quite simple: humans are physiologically different from other species. The results of tests on mice, fish, dogs, monkeys, or any other species overwhelmingly do not translate to humans.

The numbers don’t lie: 95% of all new drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials, and fewer than 10% of “highly promising” basic research findings, most of which involve tests on animals, fail to become routinely used treatments within 20 years.

Monkeys Are Used in Experiments in the UK, Too – Help Them

In 2019, 2,850 procedures using primates took place in Great Britain. It’s time to relegate such cruel experiments to the history books.

We must shift away from all procedures using animals. Sign our petition to support PETA’s Research Modernisation Deal.