PETA to Harvard: Launch ‘Eyes Sewn Shut’ Paperwork and Let’s See Who’s ‘Deceptive’

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October 18, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Boston – Please see the next assertion from PETA neuroscientist Dr. Katherine Roe concerning Harvard Medical Faculty’s try to defend experimenter Margaret Livingstone’s indefensible experiments on toddler monkeys. For 40 years, Livingstone has been depriving toddler monkeys of their means to see the world, allegedly to attempt to perceive visible processing. Her experiments embrace eradicating toddler macaques from their moms at start after which stitching one or each of their eyelids shut or by no means permitting them to see a face as a way to decide how this impacts the visible cortex. For instance, the “Supplies and Strategies” part of this 2019 paper states, “Two of the hand-reared monkeys (M5 and M6) had been raised underneath circumstances of visible kind deprivation by way of eyelid suturing for the primary yr.” In a 2020 paper, the “Supplies and Strategies” part reads: “4 of the hand-reared monkeys (M12, M13, M16, M17) had been raised by laboratory workers sporting welders’ masks that prevented the monkey from seeing the workers member’s face.” Livingstone’s personal web site states, “[W]e prevented the event of face domains by elevating monkeys whereas we wore welders masks so the monkeys by no means noticed faces.”

Photographs from certainly one of Livingstone’s personal papers are posted on the high of PETA’s webpage on these research. For maybe apparent causes, Livingstone has launched neither movies nor photographs of the monkeys whose eyelids have been sutured shut. PETA posted its iconic video—clearly labeled as such—of Britches, the blinded toddler monkey who was taken from a California college laboratory in 1985. That case together with a number of others involving abusive monkey laboratories led to important amendments to the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Margaret Livingstone and Harvard Medical Faculty are profoundly ignorant about who monkeys are and the way their brains develop. Now they’ve resorted to lies to excuse her atrocities. The data on PETA’s webpage, together with the photographs on the high of the web page, comes from Livingstone’s personal publications which are out there within the public area. Don’t be fooled by her sanitized language: “Hand-rearing” implies that toddler monkeys have been completely faraway from their moms, “monocular deprivation” implies that one eye has been sewn shut, and “binocular deprivation” implies that each eyes have been sewn shut.

Livingstone’s 40-year observe document—paved over the our bodies of lifeless cats and monkeys—demonstrates that she doesn’t perceive that taking child monkeys from their moms has a profound impact on the creating mind, rendering any information questionable. It’s unattainable to attract significant, translatable conclusions about imaginative and prescient with out considering the event of the mind. Not solely are the experiments merciless, they’re additionally scientifically flawed.

Harvard ought to shut this atrocious laboratory down now and launch all photographs, movies, veterinary-care information, and necropsy experiences associated to the monkeys instantly.

PETA—whose motto reads, partly, that “animals will not be ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For extra data on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org or comply with the group on Twitter, Fb, or Instagram.