Shut Down University of Washington Lab for Rampant Animal Abuse [Petition]

Lab animals at the University of Washington, which houses the largest primate testing facility in the country, already suffer enough. According to a petition on Care2, “Employees at the school perform grisly vivisections – experiments on live animals – drilling holes into the skulls of monkeys, implanting coils on their eyes, and tearing infant monkeys away from their mothers to intentionally cause psychological trauma.” Further, vivisectors routinely carry out horrific experiments on baby monkeys that cause them to experience convulsions. They also disfigure the babies’ eyes, suffocating them, torture babies while still in their mothers’ wombs, cause deformities, and more.

These experiments are supposedly carried out for the sake of finding an HIV vaccine and treatments for heart and eye diseases, even though humane alternative testing technologies exist and it has been proven that tests involving animals rarely produce useable results for humans.

To make matters worse, animals that are held captive at University of Washington labs and forced to endure the unthinkable for science aren’t even guaranteed basic care. Illustrating a complete disregard for life, researchers at this lab have been repeatedly cited for utter neglect.

A report in the Seattle Times showed that the USDA fined the university $10,893 in 2011 for allowing a pigtailed macaque to starve to death. Three other young monkeys were found dead in 2014 after researchers placed their cages too close to aggressive, and understandably frustrated, adult males. A year later, three more monkeys were killed by staff who improperly inserted skill and vertebral implants, according to another USDA inspection report.

Most recently, in January of this year, the USDA cited the lab for the murder of an eight-year-old female pigtail macaque who died of thirst after the waterline to her cage became disconnected and staff repeatedly failed to check it as assigned. The veterinarian on duty at the time said the victim was “severely dehydrated” and had likely been without water for several days.

If all this angers you as much as it does us, then you’ll be interested to learn that we are all indirectly supporting these crimes without even knowing it! That’s because our tax dollars are allotted to help fund this program, which has “received over $18 million of our tax dollars between 2010-2011 alone and another $12 million to breed baby monkeys for other laboratories to torture,” according to a petition on Care2.

It’s clear this abhorrent conduct at the University of Washington will carry on, and animals will continue to needlessly suffer and die, unless we take action to stop it. As taxpayers, it’s our right and duty to stand up and speak out against these abuses, and you can help by:

• Signing this petition on Care2 to demand that the National Institute of Health stop allowing taxpayer dollars to fund these experiments at the University of Washington.

• Contacting the school’s administration directly, especially if you attend, have attended, or know someone who attends the University of Washington, to urge an end to these cruel and unnecessary vivisection programs.

• Supporting organizations, like People for Reason in Science in Medicine (PRISM), that serve on the frontlines in the fight against animal testing.

In addition, sign this other petition on Care2 to demand that the USDA stop hiding animal welfare violation records and make them publicly available on its website again so that we can remain informed about the savagery that goes on inside these labs.

Image source: k r e f/Shutterstock