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Agencies failed to release public records of taxpayer-funded atrocities
For immediate release:
May 6, 2021
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Washington – On Thursday, PETA filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against the US Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for their failure to document government-run food deprivation experiments nearly drowning, electric shock and the notorious “monkey fear” research conducted at their campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires agencies to respond to FOIA requests within 20 business days of receiving them, but PETA has been waiting for responses to some of its requests for over a year.
PETA inquiries seek to find records of taxpayer-funded NIMH experiments on animals, including state experimenter Elizabeth Murray’s infamous “monkey fright” research for which she slits monkeys’ heads, slices off portions of their skulls, and then injects toxins into them. … their brains to inflict traumatic brain damage before scaring them with realistic fake spiders and snakes. Scientists, including former primate experimenter John Gluck, evolutionary biologist and animal behavior expert Mark Bekoff, and International Primate League founder Shirley McGreal, have denounced her experiments as cruel and unrelated to human experience, including the methods by which Murray deprives monkeys food and water, surgically attaches the head pillars to their skulls and holds them for several hours. Many are forced to live in social isolation and all are ultimately killed. Murray’s experiments, which have received more than $ 49 million from the federal budget, are intended to shed light on neuropsychiatric disorders in humans, but they have not produced a single cure or drug for humans in 30 years.
“If the government takes our taxes on animal torture chambers, it must be transparent and not hide its atrocities,” says PETA Senior Vice President Cathy Guillermo. “PETA’s lawsuit requires the public records necessary to hold these experimenters accountable and to which we are legally entitled.”
PETA is also looking for records related to tests by NIH experimenter Heather Cameron on mice and rats in which she kicks them, deprives them of food, traps them in small Plexiglas tubes, and places them in unavoidable glasses of water for up to 20 minutes.
PETA is represented here by Nick Lawton of public interest law firm Eubank & Associates PLLC. PETA’s motto, in particular, is that “animals are not ours to experiment on,” reflecting the group’s opposition to arrogance, a worldview based on human superiority. For more information please visit PETA.org or subscribe to the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…
A copy of the claim is available upon request.
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