February 12, 2025 • 57 mins
A pitched battle continues in a small Georgia town where residents have vowed to stop a wildly unpopular plan to house a massive monkey facility. More than 30-thousand monkeys, destined for laboratory experimentation, would be housed there and residents are up in arms. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is on the frontlines helping residents in their quest to stop the controversial facility. Meanwhile, PETA will also bring us the latest on the fate of the 43 monkeys who escaped from a South Carolina research facility back in November of 2024. All have now been recaptured but monkey escapes are just one of the many hazards of housing primates in residential areas. Of course, in the 21st Century, there is no reason to experiment on monkeys or any other animals. So, could the massive cost-cutting currently going on at the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of animal experimentation, signal a shift away from torturing monkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits and mice in outdated experiments? Let’s find out with our expert PETA panel. PETA’s Amy Meyer and Dr Lisa Jones-Engel join UnchainedTV’s Jane Velez-Mitchell.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
We have breaking news for you on so
many fronts.
The battle against cruel, wasteful, unnecessary, expensive to
the taxpayers.
Primate experimentation is raging on many fronts.
You are looking at images of just some
of the primate victims of this completely wasteful,
(00:28):
unnecessary industry.
And we are talking with People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, how to end
primate experimentation now.
And the breaking news is that PETA has
just uncovered some really, really horrific, horrific information
(00:48):
about what the government has done wrong when
it comes to a story that we've all
probably heard about.
And that story is the monkeys that escaped.
You may have heard in November of 2024,
43 monkeys escaped from a South Carolina research
(01:10):
facility.
Let's take a look at one of the
videos that PETA has provided showing really what's
behind the horror of monkeys in research.
(01:49):
So, as we've said, and I'll have to
say, unfortunately, all 43 research monkeys who escaped
the South Carolina facility have been recaptured.
Let's go straight out to Amy Meyer of
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
You are PETA's primate experimentation associate director.
(02:12):
What is the breaking news regarding these 43
monkeys?
Well, so the breaking news is that PETA,
through a records request, has received the USDA
inspection report about this incident.
And they did get cited with a violation
for this, but it was only a non
(02:33):
-critical violation.
And it's wild to us that 43 monkeys
can escape your property, some of them being
gone for months.
And when they did this inspection, there were
still four who were unaccounted for, and they
still said not critical violation.
So that's why we fired off a letter
to the USDA saying, how can this not
(02:55):
be a critical violation of these monkeys being
on the loose, getting into who knows what?
And probably, I mean, the temperatures during this
time got so low, it's inconceivable that this
is not a critical violation of the federal
animal welfare laws that are meant to try
to give these animals some basic protection.
(03:18):
It's absolutely crazy.
And it's just part of the entire, what
I would say, a lack of monitoring by
the US government when it comes to all
of these horrific animal experiments.
Now, you've pointed out this lab in Columbia
(03:40):
was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The monkeys were left in their waste.
They died from their diseases and neglect.
The NIH, the National Institutes of Health, never
inspected this facility, and it is a hellhole.
And this is just one of the many
(04:02):
foreign research labs that our government, our taxpayers,
my tax dollars are forced to subsidise.
And why?
I mean, this is absolutely insane.
I'd like to go to Dr. Lisa Jones
Engel.
You are also with People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals.
You're their primate experimentation science advisor.
(04:25):
Tell us, you know, why is it that
there isn't more concern about the waste of
money, the absolute waste of our tax dollars
when it comes to these ridiculous experiments?
Well, I think there is growing concern because
there's been growing transparency.
You know, these 43 monkeys getting out of
(04:46):
the Alpha Genesis facility, you know, the world
had never really seen an escape like that
before.
They'd never seen monkeys who were supposed to
have been kept in a cage kind of
doing what the monkey thing that they're supposed
to be doing.
And I think that has really, that's caught
people's attention.
And the question of why, why is there
(05:07):
outrage?
Well, the failed science, the injuries to the
animals, the endangered species that these animals, basically
some of these species are being driven to
extinction.
People have heard about it now.
And once people hear, once people see, they
cannot look away.
And I think that is, that has been
(05:29):
devastating to this industry who has banked on
the idea, literally banked on the idea that
no one gets to look at But we're
looking very closely.
That generated so many headlines, that monkey escape
story, precisely because they found three one day
for the other day.
(05:50):
Every time they found a few more, they
would do more news about it.
And it's sad because PETA works so hard,
so hard to get news about the heartbreaking
stupidity of these experiments that do not help
animals.
And yet it's hard to get the media
to cover that.
(06:11):
But then when some of these monkeys escape
and you're looking at happy monkeys in the
wild, they actually have an island, which I
just learned recently, they have an island near
the United States or part of the United
States.
Dr. Lisa, if you could explain where they
take these happy monkeys who are living in
families and they abduct them and they stick
them in cages.
(06:33):
Well, this is, I mean, one of the
really horrific parts of this.
This whole thing is bad.
But these 43 who escaped, they were a
part of a group of 50 of them
that were taken from Morgan Island, which is
about 40, 50 miles from the Smithsonian Embassy.
That island has had four generations of racist
macaques whose grandparents and great grandparents were actually
(06:55):
stolen from India and brought over.
But those animals have lived on that island.
They know everyone.
Every single monkey on that island is either
related or it's a brother, it's a sister,
it's an aunt or an uncle.
And so when those cage doors were left
open and 43 of them ran out, you
know why they stayed around and they just
(07:16):
didn't immediately take off?
It's because macaques are like marines.
No monkey is left behind.
So those seven who were still in there,
every one of those animals would have known
them.
It would have been someone to them that
they, it could have been their mother, it
could have been their sister.
They stayed as long as they could to
(07:37):
try to get them out, to be with
them.
And that is, that's horrifying to anyone who
thinks about what these animals, they had, they
were free, but they were not going to
leave their friends behind.
Well, McKenna Grace Fitcher says, this has to
be stopped.
How people cannot understand the sickening practise of
(08:00):
torture and killing primates renders me sick.
And that's how we all feel.
And now there is an opportunity and I
want to be careful.
Of course, this is breaking news.
A lot is happening in Washington right now.
And the first thing I want to say
is that animal experimentation has long been a
bipartisan problem.
(08:21):
Okay.
We're not talking politics right now.
I can tell you the monkeys being tortured
in these laboratories do not care whether the
people who get them out are Democrats, Republicans,
conservatives, liberals, libertarians, socialists, Green Party members, or
what have you.
They just want to get the electroids out
(08:42):
of their brains.
They want to get out of the cages.
Now, because there is a massive move to
cut federal budgets in Washington, D.C., we
have what I would call a unique opportunity
to get this message out and say, if
you're going to cut, the first place that
(09:05):
you should cut is these ridiculous experiments.
So you may have seen the headlines in
recent days.
National Institute of Health cuts billions of dollars
in biomedical funding effectively immediately.
National Institutes of Health has announced it's slashing
funding for indirect research costs.
(09:25):
The agency estimated that it could save $4
billion by capping indirect costs at 15%.
Well, that I greeted as great news.
The rest of the mainstream media did not
greet it that way.
Time magazine, I think, had the most alarmist
(09:46):
headline of all, saying the NIH budget cuts
are the apocalypse of American science, experts say.
And sure enough, a federal judge has just
blocked the cuts to medical funding.
Again, I want to say very clearly, we're
not talking partisan politics.
This has been a bipartisan catastrophe for decades.
(10:08):
These monkeys have been subjected to the same
research over and over again, you know, cut
up, you know, blinded, addicted to cocaine, terrified
under Republican administrations, Democrat administrations.
It's been happening for decades.
(10:29):
If there is a unique opportunity to end
this, I say let's go for it.
Let's do a little roundtable.
Amy, where are you on this?
Well, I absolutely agree.
And there's, you know, we are wasting billions
and billions of dollars through the National Institutes
of Health every year, doing these horrific experiments
on monkeys, where they are addicted to drugs,
(10:51):
they are, have electrodes implanted in their brains,
all kinds of hideous experiments.
And of course, they're all confined to these
tiny metal cages.
They never feel the warmth of the sun,
they never get freedom, they never get to
live with their families.
And it's all with our taxpayer dollars.
And what's interesting about this move now to
(11:12):
target these indirect research costs, when you look
at who some of the worst offenders are
of having outrageously high indirect research costs, it's
the National Primate Research Centres, the Washington National
Primate Research Centre has 80% of its
funding that gets from the NIH for these
(11:32):
experiments on monkeys are in this indirect cost
bucket, which means it's not the expenses for
the needs of the research itself, it kind
of covers the administration costs.
And it's, it's so high, because it costs
a lot of money just to keep the
lights on in a facility where you are
housing these sensitive animals.
(11:54):
And so PETA saying we need to be
focussing on the worst offenders that are wasting
the most amount of money, and are constantly
breaking federal animal welfare laws, they're led by
people who have been found to have research
misconduct.
These places are terrible for animals, they're not
well run.
(12:14):
And they're the most giant waste of money.
So that's where we really want to focus
the most of getting just this fraud taken
care of.
So where, where are we?
Again, getting back to what McKenna Grace Fitcher
said, this has to be stopped.
How people cannot understand the sickening practise of
torture and killing done to these primates renders
(12:36):
me sick.
But I have to say, Amy, that every
time you try to cut these budgets, people
scream, Oh, my God, America is going to
lose its place in science.
Oh, my God, people are going to die,
never really talking about the fact that at
least 95% of the experiments on animals
(12:58):
are completely useless when it comes to human
beings.
Because guess what, we don't have tails, we
don't have paws.
We don't have claws.
Dogs will die if they eat too much
chocolate or grapes.
That doesn't apply to people.
So Dr. Lisa Jones Engel, what can we
do in this unique opportunity where there is
(13:20):
budget cutting going on in Washington, D.C.
to make sure that these wasteful experiments are
priority number one?
You know what?
I think that what we're seeing now is
maybe an extinction level event for primate users,
particularly in the National Primate Research Centres.
But anyone who is experimenting on primates, it's
(13:41):
the amount of money that's being spent and
the amount, the consistent level of failures, everyone
sees that now.
And I think this is going through and
shutting down the National Primate Research Centres, these
facilities.
So keep in mind, when a monkey is
in a cage, there's only one thing that
they're thinking about, and that's how do I
get out?
(14:02):
And so these indirect costs are part of
these are kind of measures to try to
keep the animals in, to make sure that
all the doors are secure, that the cages
are strong, that the staff is there, that
everything is in place.
But the monkeys are consistently figuring it out.
Alpha genesis monkeys leave, UW Primate Centre monkeys
leave.
Every single primate centre sees these animals escaping.
(14:25):
And I think with that transparency and with
the clear evidence that the science is failing,
do we have an HIV vaccine?
No.
Do we have a malaria vaccine?
Do we have a TB vaccine?
No.
But for decades, every one of those vaccines
have been developed and supposedly tested safe in
monkeys in these facilities.
And every single time that fails.
(14:48):
And I think what has happened is that
on both sides of the aisle, the politicians
are saying enough, enough of wasting taxpayer dollars.
If we want good science, there's better ways
to get science, to get good results than
to put a monkey in a cage and
expect that animal that we have not shared
a common ancestor with for 24 million years
(15:10):
to give us any information, any reliable, translatable
information about ourselves.
So I'm, I, I think this is it.
This is the animal experimenters in institutions were
always considered the rainmakers because they brought in
multi-million dollar grants with these massive indirect
(15:30):
costs attached to them that the institutions were
like, yummy.
I'll just, I'll eat, eat all of this
up.
But that, that tap is going to be
turned off.
And then the institutions, the, the harm benefit
analysis, they're going to be forced to do,
you know, the benefit of getting a lot
of money from monkey studies versus the harm,
which is, you know, the outrage, the, the
(15:52):
uncertainness of the reliability of the research of
the, of people suing them for, for their
bad actions.
That's those harms really quickly outweighing the benefits.
So, okay.
What can we do with the backlash against
the proposed cuts?
Again, if you're just joining us, there's so
much breaking news on this front right now,
(16:14):
but the bottom line is that due to,
again, this is a bipartisan issue.
I'm not talking politics, partisan politics.
I'm talking, get the monkeys out of the
cages, get all these animals out of the
cages.
So due to a new administration wanting to
slash federal funding, the National Institutes of Health
(16:38):
cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding effective
immediately.
That's a headline.
Okay.
But what happened was just very recently there
was a huge backlash.
And for example, Time Magazine saying it's the
apocalypse of American science and a federal judge
(16:59):
has at least temporarily blocked the current administration
from making these cuts to these research programmes.
And so where does that leave us now,
Amy?
I mean, how can we get to the
powers that be and make the point that,
hey, and it doesn't matter whether you think
(17:20):
a broken clock is right twice a day
or the law of unintended consequences, however you
want to analyse this in your mind, this
particular cut is good.
We're wasting billions of dollars, torturing millions of
animals and nothing to see from it.
I'll just say 30 years ago, 30 years
(17:42):
ago, I was asked by a very big
organisation to lead a walk, okay, for a
cure of some sort.
I'm not going to identify the organisation, so
don't take any hints from that.
And we went to lunch and I started
asking questions.
I said, well, what are you doing with
the money?
I said, do you do animal experimentation?
Before I left the restaurant, I got a
(18:03):
message.
You're off the hook.
You don't have to lead that march anymore.
We don't want you.
See, when you start asking questions, they don't
want you.
That was 30 years ago.
So I tell people, ask questions, but what
can we do at this particularly crucial juncture,
(18:23):
Amy, to make sure that the folks who
are, let's face it, they're laughing all the
way to the bank with this money coming
into the universities.
How can we counteract that narrative?
I mean, I think that it is important
to keep sharing information.
Go to PETA.org.
You can learn about what is happening at
(18:44):
the National Primate Research Centres like the one
at the University of Washington.
And you can take simple action steps, right,
on those pages on PETA.org to encourage
the National Institutes of Health to stop funding
these primate research centres.
The judge has at least stalled right now
this across-the-board cut that would impact
(19:05):
other research too, not only experiments done on
animals, but where we could at least find
like the most easy cut, I think, is
to stop funding these primate research centres that
are not only wasting millions and millions of
dollars every year.
They are torturing thousands of monkeys.
They have been found to violate Federal Animal
(19:26):
Welfare Act dozens of times, including some really,
really gross ones and just really heinous ones,
like leaving a monkey in a cage when
they put it through this high-pressure, high
-heat cage washer killing them.
They are just a mess.
And so go to PETA.org to take
(19:46):
action or go beyond that and send an
email to your member of Congress saying, I
support cutting funding for these places.
Let's have the National Institutes of Health cut
funding to these experiments on monkeys.
So many of them are now endangered monkeys.
(20:07):
We are literally decimating the forests and their
natural homes of these animals to be experimenting
on them here.
Let's put an end to all of this
and save taxpayer money in the process.
I mean, when you look at these animals
in the wild, their innocence, their beauty, obviously
(20:27):
they love their fellow monkeys.
They live in family groups.
What we're doing is, I don't even have
words for it, mediaeval, barbaric, psychotic.
Yes, that's what it is.
And again, these experiments are not accomplishing anything.
(20:48):
We are in the 21st century.
There are organs on a chip.
We look at things from the molecular and
the submolecular level.
You don't need to be injecting cocaine into
these monkeys.
Just the number of experiments.
Amy, can you give us a list of
some of the most ridiculous, and they're all
(21:11):
ridiculous in my book, but I know there
was this one experiment where they would make
the monkeys pregnant and then take the babies
away and then scare the mama monkey with
all sorts of rattlesnakes and then drug the
mama monkey so the baby couldn't wake mama
up.
I mean, it's something out of a horror
movie.
It's out of like The Exorcist or one
(21:35):
of these slasher movies.
That's really what's going on.
I think these experimenters need to have psychological
evaluations, in my opinion.
Yeah.
I mean, that one is particularly awful.
There's no such thing as an illegal experiment
on animals in this country.
Whatever they can dream up, if they can
(21:57):
get their committee friends to agree with it,
it happens.
You see all kinds of silly research going
on.
It's just clearly, why do we need to
be doing this when we don't?
There's so much just curiosity-driven experiments.
I know I live in Oregon, and the
Oregon National Primate Research Centre, I remember reading
a story about experimenters who were giving THC
(22:21):
to monkeys and then attaching these electrodes to
their penises to see what the sperm count
level does with different amounts of THC in
their system.
It's just completely irrelevant to anything, to any
type of cure that people are hoping for.
And we have experimenters who are taking babies
away from their mothers and then making it
(22:43):
so that they never see a face, even
a human face for the first year of
their life to see how much that messes
them up and their eyesight up.
These are terrible, awful experiments.
What's really particularly tragic with primate experiments to
me is that some of these monkeys are
(23:05):
living in these conditions for decades.
Some of these monkeys, we read a story
recently of a University of Washington, who this
monkey's life started in Madison in a laboratory.
Then they went with this experimenter, Michelle Basso,
to UCLA, and then she went to Seattle.
And so this monkey was born in 1994
(23:26):
and was just killed a couple years ago.
These monkeys can live so many years, and
it's just every single day is horror beyond
the experiments, beyond the terrible things happening in
the experiment itself.
It's unconscionable to think of these highly social
animals living alone in a stainless steel cage
where the lights come on at the same
(23:48):
time each day, they go off each time
each day, and they have no control over
their life at all.
The only thing they can control is tearing
out their own hair or eating their own
fingers because they're driven so mad by these
conditions.
It just needs to end.
It can end.
(24:08):
It should end.
Maybe we actually will be seeing this now
that there is real talk of the funding
being stopped.
That's why this is all happening.
It's all about the money.
If we target the money, I have hope
that this is how we can start making
a really serious impact on not having so
many monkeys being tortured and killed in these
(24:30):
places.
Well, I agree.
I don't care why you're trying to stop
it.
If you have an irrational reason for stopping,
I don't care.
Stop it.
Let's stop it.
I want to go to another breaking news
story.
There's so many breaking news stories on the
primate experimentation front.
PETA has led the way trying to stop
(24:51):
an outrageous plan to put 30,000 monkeys
in a small town in Georgia, and the
people there are up in arms.
Let's watch a local news report that was
very well done on the issue that we're
going to discuss on the other side.
A year later, Bainbridge neighbours are still voicing
(25:12):
their concerns about a monkey facility project by
pulling out all the stops.
These are the cages that the monkeys will
be transported in if we don't put a
stop to this.
Even county leaders who originally voted for the
project but later rescinded their vote spoke out
at a monkey expo Thursday night.
(25:33):
And I said early on we made a
mistake.
As the fate of the primate facility hangs
in the balance of the courts, Bainbridge residents
say they're hopeful they can shut down the
project.
We're standing that it's not going to come
here.
We don't want it here.
Lena Allen, WALV, your hometown news source.
(25:53):
Thank you for that report.
We appreciate it.
So, Amy, what's the latest on that breaking
story?
Yeah, well, I mean, that latest, that was
a town hall.
It was about a year after this fight
started, and as you can see in the
video, it's still packed.
These local residents are not giving up in
Bainbridge.
They are fighters.
(26:14):
They are set on keeping this terrible project
that would be imprisoning 30,000 monkeys when
it's at full capacity in their town, which
only has like 9,000 humans in it.
So they're fighting so hard, and there are
now four ongoing lawsuits related to this case
to try to stop it.
(26:35):
So there's lawsuits trying to get at the
lack of transparency that was involved from city
leaders in bringing this project to their community,
and then there's also a lawsuit, a nuisance
case talking about all the ways that this
would create a nuisance for the people, especially
right around where the proposed facility is taking
(26:55):
place.
And now we even see the state of
Georgia stepping up and trying to undo some
of this mess, too, and trying to appeal
it to the Georgia Supreme Court to undo
this terrible bond deal, which was like the
sweetheart package of money to give this brand
new company to bring this dreadful project to
(27:16):
Bainbridge.
So I have to play the response given
to that particular local news outlet from the
folks who want to create this.
Safer Human Medicine is excited to collaborate with
the Development Authority to advance this project.
Support for this project is growing, with many
residents from Decatur County already expressing strong interest
in job opportunities.
(27:37):
What is your response to that?
We'll start with Amy, then we'll go to
Lisa.
Well, I mean, even the locals who I
met with there and who I continue to
meet with it, it's hard to find anyone
in Bainbridge who actually wants us there.
I very much have doubts about their statement
itself, and people just realise that this is
not only a matter of cruelty to the
(27:59):
animals.
For the people there, it threatens their water
system because of how many monkeys would be
in this monkey factory farm.
It threatens their way of life.
It threatens the potential disease outbreak in these
facilities.
It's just a complete mess, and I think
that we're going to stop it.
(28:20):
I fully think it is going to be
stopped.
These people are not backing down.
They, like I said, they are fighters and
they're not backing down.
And how does the whole budget cut initiative
in Washington dovetail with that?
Because a lot of the experiments that these
monkeys, these poor monkeys would be used in,
(28:41):
would be taxpayer funded through the National Institutes
of Health, which is the largest funder of
animal experimentation in the world.
Lisa?
Exactly.
I mean, what, you know, Safer Human Medicine
was supposed to have had their first monkey
out the door for sale in December, and
they haven't laid a single brick because this
town is not going to let them do
(29:02):
that.
They're going to use every resource they have
to stop this facility from coming to ground.
And I think what Safer Human Medicine is
also not being forthright about is that the
use of primates in the pharmaceutical industry, which
is who they would be selling these monkeys
to, the clients are not using as many
(29:23):
monkeys as they used to.
The value, and I put that in big
air quotes, of these monkeys has dropped precipitously.
This, you know, they thought this was going
to be a massive moneymaker, and it's not
going to be.
The demand is drying up, the supply is
changing, and the awareness that people have of
alternatives is meaning that the scientific community themselves
(29:46):
are saying, no, I'm not going to waste
my time and money and resources on a
monkey model.
I'm going to use a human relevant model,
and they are.
And so, you know, Safer Human Medicine has
lost this one here in Georgia.
They're clinging on with their fingernails, but I
don't see how they're ever going to be
able to go forward with this.
(30:07):
Well, I want to say we invite Safer
Human Medicine or any of the experimenters on
primates or other animals that have been mentioned
on anytime.
I would love to dialogue with them.
Now, let's talk about what PETA has done
in terms of creating a roadmap for research
modernisation.
(30:28):
Again, newsflash to all those animal experimenters out
there, we're in the 21st century, and there
are plenty of more sophisticated and more modern
methods of doing science than the mediaeval practise
of torturing animals.
You know, they've been breaking dog spinal cords
since before Christ to see what happens, and
(30:48):
they're still doing it.
And nothing has changed in a lot of
ways.
It's so crazy that people buy this.
But let's check out PETA's plan for research
modernisation.
Did you know that 95% of new
drugs fail in human trials?
All had passed animal testing, but ended up
being either harmful or useless for the people
(31:10):
who needed them.
We need to end this waste, and we
need to do it now.
Research Modernisation Now, a roadmap developed by scientists,
will shift science away from pointless and cruel
experiments on animals, and toward life-saving research
that can really help humans.
Discover three ways you can stop wasting lives
and tax funds today.
(31:31):
So tell us, Amy, about PETA's roadmap for
research modernisation now.
Yeah, well, it's really the only comprehensive and
common sense strategy for carefully replacing animal experiments
with things like organs on a chip, artificial
intelligence, sophisticated computer modelling.
(31:52):
And what it really builds in is just
some priorities of first stopping the experiments on
animals where there is profound and expansive evidence
that it is not working, where the numbers
are even higher than that 95% failure
of drugs rate.
And then it also builds in a plan
(32:15):
for training, of training new scientists in these
better, more human-relevant models.
It's really a wonderful comprehensive plan, and this
is something that is so easy for people
to take action to support this effort.
You can go to PETA.org, and it's
really easy if you're a US citizen.
You can take action to send a letter
(32:37):
to your member of Congress to support this
effort.
It's really, it would encompass everything.
It doesn't, it's not only just about research
happening on universities, experiments on animals happening at
universities, but it's also about just the whole
picture and really changing our priorities, especially through
(32:58):
the National Institutes of Health, like we've been
talking about.
This would get at the big picture, start
getting cures faster, and stop torturing animals in
needless experiments.
But you hit on a very important point.
This is holding back life-saving research because
it doesn't work.
So doing it over and over again and
(33:19):
torturing all these animals, some of these experiments
have gone on for decades, doing the same
exact thing over and over again, because as
I understand it, Dr. Lisa, it's easy to
come up with a project that involves killing
animals.
Like, well, we're going to find out whether,
how long it takes 50% of these
animals to die.
It takes a lot more creativity to come
(33:41):
up with something that is not just, oh,
here's the death toll, and what might that
or might not have that, have an impact
on humans.
You know what, they call it science, but
it's really, it's just monkey business.
It is about the business of using primates.
(34:01):
I'm a primatologist, so I speak mostly about
the primates, but it's about how do you
squeeze the most out of these monkeys to
kind of prop up your business or to
generate your next publication?
It's not science, it's a business.
And these monkeys have paid the price for
this for more than a century, and it's
(34:23):
going to stop.
And I think when the taxpayer realises that
they too are paying the price, they're paying
for the monkey, they're paying for the infrastructure,
they're paying these massive salaries for these experimenters
and the administrators, they're going to say, no,
that's not what I pay my taxes for.
(34:45):
I pay my taxes to do good research,
to do sound research.
And so I think that this move to
really dramatically reduce the IDCs, it is going
to hit the animal researchers the heaviest because
they are the biggest consumers of these resources.
(35:05):
And I think the scientific and the political
community are done with that.
Well, a very interesting point by Milofar Ashgarian,
the animal experimental industrial complex has to fall.
It is a complex.
And I have to say being in the
media, the media is part of the complex.
(35:26):
Again, if you look at the media coverage
of the NIH proposed funding cuts, you'd think
the sky was falling.
Oh my God, it's the end of the
world, an apocalypse, blah, blah, blah.
But when you try to tell these same
media organisations, right, that, hey, look at the
(35:48):
stats, look at the outcomes, more than 95
% of these experiments do not work.
Basically, you're ignored.
I wish you weren't.
But how are we going to do with
the media coverage, Amy?
I think that's a great question, Jane.
I wish I knew the answer.
But it's interesting to me that you even
(36:11):
see people who are defenders of the NIH,
they recognise a lot of the problems that
the NIH has, even the people who defend
it.
There is other issues beyond the animals being
tortured that concern people.
There is duplication happening across the country.
There is research misconduct happening that people are
(36:33):
being caught for.
There's all kinds of issues.
It should be, I think that it has
been clear to a lot of people, even
the most staunch supporters, that there needs to
be some significant reforms at the NIH.
And, you know, maybe just this kind of
blanket sweep option is what has people so
upset and afraid.
(36:54):
And it was so fast.
And usually, government is very slow to do
anything.
So maybe that's part of why we're seeing
the reaction we are.
But yeah, it is just a challenge with
media, Jane.
And a lot of them, you know, rely
on some of these very industries that are
making a lot of money.
(37:14):
These universities are really powerful with local media,
with local politicians.
And so it was not a surprise at
all that we saw just the next business
day, 22 states had joined this lawsuit to
try to stop the cuts that are being
proposed at the NIH.
You know, they're fighting against it, which I
(37:35):
wasn't really surprised to see, to be honest.
This is, it means a lot of money
to basically every state.
Well, also the media, if you look at
the TV commercials, it's pharmaceuticals.
There's a huge, huge pharmaceutical.
I personally think it's crazy that we have
advertising that says, ask your doctor for this
(37:57):
pill.
Hello?
The doctors are supposed to assess what's wrong
with you and make a recommendation.
You're not supposed to go to the doctor
like you're some drug addict looking for a
drug pusher to give you your fix.
You're supposed to go to a doctor and
the doctor is supposed to say, okay, I
think this is what's wrong with you.
This is what you should do.
But we've turned that on its head with
(38:18):
these commercials.
And so of course, you're going to see
the media reacting in the way it's reacting.
Oh, the sky's falling, these budget cuts.
It's all the pillars, all the pillars of
government and our democracy have been overtaken by
these industries.
And it's the courts to a certain degree,
(38:41):
we'll see what the courts do.
It's the media, which is the fourth estate.
And it's the members of Congress as well
who get, I believe the pharmaceutical industry is
the largest, has the largest number of lobbyists
in Washington.
Lisa?
I mean, one of the other things we
(39:03):
haven't really touched on, but now that you
brought up the pharmaceutical industry on this, now
this industry has been bringing in tens of
thousands of monkeys from Asia and Mauritius every
year.
And these animals have been arriving into the
US infected with multiple strains of tuberculosis, with
deadly diarrhoeal pathogens, with a tier one select
agent.
(39:24):
This industry is actually more likely to trigger
the next pandemic than it is to provide
meaningful improvements in human health.
And trying to get the media to talk
about that, that's been a real uphill battle
as well.
But that's the thing I think, and it's
not just the pharmaceutical industry, within the primate
centres themselves, we get reports of workers who
(39:47):
get infected with things like Shigella or MRSA
or tuberculosis.
This is an incredibly dangerous industry, certainly for
the monkeys, but also for the people who
are working in it, which in large part
is why this industry really has a terrible
time maintaining staffing.
Wow.
Well, you know, there's a lot of talk
(40:07):
these days about the 80-20 rule, that
80% of outcomes are determined by 20
% of inputs.
And that's where I see abusive animals across
the board.
Our abuse of animals is creating at least
80% of the problems that we're dealing
with societally.
I mean, whether you're talking about the pandemics,
it doesn't matter whether you think it started
in the Wuhan wet market where they were
(40:28):
torturing animals to chop them up to sell
them to be eaten, or you thought it
started in the Wuhan lab where they were
torturing animals in their various tests.
It was animal torture.
Now we've got the bird flu.
And the list goes on and on.
Certainly the health care costs as a result
of our unhealthy diet, which is subsidised by
(40:50):
the US government in its subsidies of commodity
crops that are fed to animals and subsidies
of farmers, bailing them out for natural disasters,
et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, the list goes on and on
of all the problems that are created by
our government's subsidy of animal abuse.
And I just hope that even if the
(41:11):
people who are looking at this do not
care about animals at all, they're only trying
to cut the budget, that they look at
all of this.
And of course, particularly the abuse of animals
and specifically primates.
You know, I guess I wanted to ask,
how is PETA able to weigh in on
this debate right now?
(41:32):
Is there a way to get to those
people who are making those decisions and say,
hey, here's another reason why you should cut
or not?
Amy?
Yeah, absolutely.
We are working on getting our information to
as many people as we can who are
in positions of power.
We are always trying to get our good,
(41:53):
solid, scientifically backed information to people in power
and making it so that the agenda they're
wanting to push is one that could help
animals.
That is something, this could be doing so
much good for animals in laboratories.
If they want to look at cutting funding
to the NIH, there's so much that could
(42:15):
be done to cut funding that is just
torturing animals.
They've been doing it decade after decade, countless
animals dead with nothing to show for it.
We've talked about how devastating it is for
the animals, for the workers inside of these
places, but it's also devastating for all of
us because we don't have the cures that
(42:35):
we all are desperately hoping for ourselves or
our family or our friends.
If we can embrace PETA's research modernisation now
and start investing instead in these more human
relevant forms of research and put all those
billions of dollars we're wasting, tormenting 100 million
animals every year, if we funnel that instead
(42:56):
to these human relevant research models, we're going
to get to those answers that we all
are looking for much faster and without torturing
and killing anyone in the process.
Well, from your mouth to God's ear, I
hope that this all comes together.
Again, it is just a really unique opportunity.
(43:22):
Amira John says, one has to be a
sadist to work in this industry and totally
out of touch with reality.
If this was about science, they would have
discovered another way long ago.
Yes, it really is about money and it's
about basically people who are living lavish lifestyles
(43:44):
off of government funding, doing these nonsensical experiments
that are incredibly cruel over and over again,
and the universities encourage it because they get
a that's exactly what it is.
When you get your grant from the National
(44:04):
Institutes of Health and you say, all right,
it's going to cost me a half million
dollars over a year for five years to
do whatever experiments that I'm planning on these
monkeys.
The university, I'll speak to the University of
Washington because that's the one where I was
working at and most familiar with, NIH gives
them another 83 cents on that dollar for
(44:26):
these indirect costs.
The incentive for the university to keep this
gravy train rolling is astonishing.
The incentive for the investigator, the experimenter to
end up with a $200,000, $300,000,
$400,000 annual salary as they are just
(44:47):
grinding through this taxpayer money, it's all been
laid out there for them.
This has been the standard.
This has been what's been acceptable for decades
and what happened last week, earlier this week,
when the idea that that gravy train would
be cut off, people are terrified.
(45:10):
There will be impacts to some of the
science, but there are some areas of science,
particularly in the National Research Centres, you could
wipe those out tomorrow.
You could end all of that funding tomorrow,
get those animals into sanctuary, retrain, redirect those
scientists into meaningful, relevant fields of science, and
we would all be better for that.
(45:32):
Wow.
Well, from your mouth to God's ear, as
they say, let's hope that happens.
I've been just grappling with this unique opportunity
that comes along.
You don't expect, well, what's going to happen?
Boom, there's just this window.
How do we get to the powers that
be to make sure that this funding is
(45:55):
cut?
You have, for example, the Cargo Act, which
I think is an incredible idea that Pete
has come up with, which essentially says these
overseas research labs that taxpayers are funding here
in the United States, they've got to go.
There's one particularly horrific example that PETA uncovered
(46:19):
for two decades.
This lab was run in Columbia, monkeys left
in their waste, left to die from infected
wounds.
The NIH, which funded, never inspected this laboratory.
The NIH is using our tax dollars to
bankroll these hell holes.
This isn't a lab.
(46:39):
This isn't science.
This is a nightmare.
PETA shut this lab down and wants to
shut all the other labs around the world
that our tax dollars are funding shut down.
That's why I think everybody should support the
Cargo Act.
I know if you go to PETA.org,
(47:01):
you can actually also use your...
What I love about PETA is that in
two seconds, you can send a letter.
They've got it down to a fine science
where sometimes, once you sign up, I'll get
these texts.
Here, just hit Y and it sends a
dozen letters to members of Congress.
You definitely want to go to PETA.org
(47:23):
and get on their list so that I
get emails, whatever I'm doing, and I get
an email from PETA and I'm busy, let
me tell you.
I stop what I'm doing because I know
in 30 seconds, I'll be able to send
a message to a whole bunch of members
of Congress or whoever else you've suggested that
we reach out to.
It's like this, boom, boom, boom, and it's
(47:45):
done.
That's why it's important to sign up to
PETA.org so that you get on that
list because it's a numbers game.
Is it not, Amy?
You're absolutely right.
As someone who spent a lot of time
as a grassroots activist before joining PETA, I
honestly really underestimated the power of these simple
(48:05):
actions that don't take me any time.
It is, like you said, just the push
of a button and this letter is going
to my member of Congress because I put
in my address.
You don't have to know who your member
of Congress is to encourage them to support
the Cargo Act.
You just go to PETA.org, look for
the Cargo Act and put in your address
and it will do that all for you.
(48:27):
Coming on the primate side of things, sometimes
we have a hard time getting a response
from an agency.
They are not responding to us.
We are trying to work nicely with them.
We'll send out an action alert to our
members to say, hey, push this button, send
this email, we need the Fish and Wildlife
or whoever to pay attention to us.
Then sometimes the next day, they're finally calling
(48:50):
me after me trying for months to get
a hold of them.
They're saying, okay, make these emails stop.
What do you want?
It's so important.
It might feel like maybe you don't realise
how important it is, but from our side
of things, this is how we create change
is just this mass mobilisation of people.
(49:10):
There's all kinds of ways to get involved.
PETA.org, though, like you said, Jane, that's
just one easy way you could be getting
involved every day.
Yes.
I love it because a lot of times
the things that we're working on, we don't
know what the impact is going to be.
We don't know if there's a finish line.
Every time I hit that button with PETA,
I know, oh, something's gotten done.
(49:32):
I've hit the finish line, which is so
rare with animal activism.
A lot of times you can do a
lot of things and not know what the
impact is.
By the way, we have a very, very
special guest watching.
Jenny Desmond says, thanks for all the amazing
work to PETA.
She runs the Liberian chimpanzee rescue with her
(49:54):
husband.
They have an incredible story where they literally
upended their lives.
Her husband's a veterinarian to go to Liberia
after a whole lot of chimps were abandoned
by the New York Blood Centre.
There was a huge controversy.
Finally, after a lot of activists I was
(50:17):
there for a few, did die-ins and
protests, the New York Blood Centre did agree
to pay for the care of the monkeys
as they should have from day one.
Then all these other orphan monkeys started coming
in and Jenny Desmond and her husband stayed
in Liberia where they are to this day
(50:38):
caring for all these other orphan monkeys, orphaned
from the illegal pet trade, from the bushmeat
trade, et cetera, et cetera.
Great work, Jenny.
We love you and I'm so excited that
you are watching our show.
She's probably watching from Liberia, which is great.
(50:59):
People watch from all around the world.
We've only got a few minutes, perhaps since
there are so many breaking news stories surrounding
the chimpanzee issue, how would you sum it
up?
What are your final thoughts, Dr. Lisa?
We're at a critical point.
(51:19):
We've seen the scientific community move away here
in the U.S. from using chimpanzees.
We saw that a decade ago.
The scientists said they weren't giving us the
use of chimps, wasn't giving us the answers,
the data that we needed.
Ethically, it was a problem.
Those animals were then on the Endangered Species
Act.
The industry pivoted towards monkeys, towards macaques, and
(51:41):
we saw a huge burst of grabbing those
animals from everywhere around the world.
We're at that next inflexion point.
Everything is now saying we need to be
done completely with primates.
The money is drying up.
The populations of animals are drying up.
We've got better scientific ways of getting the
(52:02):
information we need.
We now know of the public health risks
that are associated with using these primates.
Jane, I think we're at that cusp.
It just takes people asking the questions, digging
in, sending the emails, being very vocal about
this is not how I want my money
(52:23):
used.
That'll get us to the next step where
we'll see every one of these animals who
have been used in experimentation in the U
.S., all these primates, they deserve a happy
ending, and that would be in sanctuary.
That's what I'm wanting to see soon.
(52:43):
Amy, what are your final thoughts?
I think, like you said, Jane, there's just
so much happening, so much news constantly.
I really encourage folks to follow PETA.org
for the latest.
We expect more news coming in the upcoming
weeks.
We will be staying on top of things
to make sure we are making the most
use out of every current event to make
(53:05):
sure that everything is focused as much as
we can on shutting down these places and,
like Lisa said, getting these remaining victims to
places of sanctuary where they can finally live
like the monkeys that they are.
I will say my final thought is right
now we have to do everything that we
can to reach the powers that be who
(53:26):
want to cut funding and say this is
the area to cut.
I was reading an article about how one
individual posted something on X about what he
felt was ridiculous government spending, and it caught
the eye of the owner of X, Elon
Musk, who is the head of DOGE, the
Department of Government Efficiency, or worse to that
(53:49):
effect, and the cut then ended up making
headlines.
I think we are in the same position.
That does not mean we endorse every single
cut.
Again, I want to say that the monkeys
do not care what your political allegiance is,
whether you are Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, libertarian,
socialist, Green Party, whatever.
(54:10):
They just want to get out of the
cages.
They want to get those electrodes out of
their brains.
They want to stop the torture.
Frankly, it is torture for us.
It is torture for me personally to know
that these animals are being tortured and that
my tax dollars have to go to it.
I would do anything to make it stop.
Make it stop.
(54:31):
It is just too stupid.
It is too stupid more than anything else.
We have got to end it.
I just want to thank all of you
for being a part of this broadcast.
These are two very, very busy people, and
they took the time out of their very
busy schedule to talk to us and bring
(54:54):
us up to date.
I always say, please download the Unchained TV
app.
We are the world's only free non-profit
vegan streaming television network, animal rights streaming television
network.
We are on your phone.
We are also on your TV.
It is on there behind me.
It is also on your tablet.
(55:15):
I really appreciate everybody downloading it.
It is 100% free.
It is a way to stay up to
date with the animal rights movement as it
happens.
It is a vegan Netflix.
That is the thing I have ever heard.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained TV.
Your life will change.
(55:36):
It is just that easy.
Unchained TV has all sorts of content for
everybody.
Unchained TV changed my life.
Unchained TV is crushing it.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained TV is my go-to.
Unchained TV.
Who knew?
We have breaking news for you on so
many fronts.
The battle against cruel, wasteful, unnecessary, expensive to
the taxpayers.
Primate experimentation is raging on many fronts.
You are looking at images of just some
of the primate victims of this completely wasteful,
(00:28):
unnecessary industry.
And we are talking with People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, how to end
primate experimentation now.
And the breaking news is that PETA has
just uncovered some really, really horrific, horrific information
(00:48):
about what the government has done wrong when
it comes to a story that we've all
probably heard about.
And that story is the monkeys that escaped.
You may have heard in November of 2024,
43 monkeys escaped from a South Carolina research
(01:10):
facility.
Let's take a look at one of the
videos that PETA has provided showing really what's
behind the horror of monkeys in research.
(01:49):
So, as we've said, and I'll have to
say, unfortunately, all 43 research monkeys who escaped
the South Carolina facility have been recaptured.
Let's go straight out to Amy Meyer of
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
You are PETA's primate experimentation associate director.
(02:12):
What is the breaking news regarding these 43
monkeys?
Well, so the breaking news is that PETA,
through a records request, has received the USDA
inspection report about this incident.
And they did get cited with a violation
for this, but it was only a non
(02:33):
-critical violation.
And it's wild to us that 43 monkeys
can escape your property, some of them being
gone for months.
And when they did this inspection, there were
still four who were unaccounted for, and they
still said not critical violation.
So that's why we fired off a letter
to the USDA saying, how can this not
(02:55):
be a critical violation of these monkeys being
on the loose, getting into who knows what?
And probably, I mean, the temperatures during this
time got so low, it's inconceivable that this
is not a critical violation of the federal
animal welfare laws that are meant to try
to give these animals some basic protection.
(03:18):
It's absolutely crazy.
And it's just part of the entire, what
I would say, a lack of monitoring by
the US government when it comes to all
of these horrific animal experiments.
Now, you've pointed out this lab in Columbia
(03:40):
was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The monkeys were left in their waste.
They died from their diseases and neglect.
The NIH, the National Institutes of Health, never
inspected this facility, and it is a hellhole.
And this is just one of the many
(04:02):
foreign research labs that our government, our taxpayers,
my tax dollars are forced to subsidise.
And why?
I mean, this is absolutely insane.
I'd like to go to Dr. Lisa Jones
Engel.
You are also with People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals.
You're their primate experimentation science advisor.
(04:25):
Tell us, you know, why is it that
there isn't more concern about the waste of
money, the absolute waste of our tax dollars
when it comes to these ridiculous experiments?
Well, I think there is growing concern because
there's been growing transparency.
You know, these 43 monkeys getting out of
(04:46):
the Alpha Genesis facility, you know, the world
had never really seen an escape like that
before.
They'd never seen monkeys who were supposed to
have been kept in a cage kind of
doing what the monkey thing that they're supposed
to be doing.
And I think that has really, that's caught
people's attention.
And the question of why, why is there
(05:07):
outrage?
Well, the failed science, the injuries to the
animals, the endangered species that these animals, basically
some of these species are being driven to
extinction.
People have heard about it now.
And once people hear, once people see, they
cannot look away.
And I think that is, that has been
(05:29):
devastating to this industry who has banked on
the idea, literally banked on the idea that
no one gets to look at But we're
looking very closely.
That generated so many headlines, that monkey escape
story, precisely because they found three one day
for the other day.
(05:50):
Every time they found a few more, they
would do more news about it.
And it's sad because PETA works so hard,
so hard to get news about the heartbreaking
stupidity of these experiments that do not help
animals.
And yet it's hard to get the media
to cover that.
(06:11):
But then when some of these monkeys escape
and you're looking at happy monkeys in the
wild, they actually have an island, which I
just learned recently, they have an island near
the United States or part of the United
States.
Dr. Lisa, if you could explain where they
take these happy monkeys who are living in
families and they abduct them and they stick
them in cages.
(06:33):
Well, this is, I mean, one of the
really horrific parts of this.
This whole thing is bad.
But these 43 who escaped, they were a
part of a group of 50 of them
that were taken from Morgan Island, which is
about 40, 50 miles from the Smithsonian Embassy.
That island has had four generations of racist
macaques whose grandparents and great grandparents were actually
(06:55):
stolen from India and brought over.
But those animals have lived on that island.
They know everyone.
Every single monkey on that island is either
related or it's a brother, it's a sister,
it's an aunt or an uncle.
And so when those cage doors were left
open and 43 of them ran out, you
know why they stayed around and they just
(07:16):
didn't immediately take off?
It's because macaques are like marines.
No monkey is left behind.
So those seven who were still in there,
every one of those animals would have known
them.
It would have been someone to them that
they, it could have been their mother, it
could have been their sister.
They stayed as long as they could to
(07:37):
try to get them out, to be with
them.
And that is, that's horrifying to anyone who
thinks about what these animals, they had, they
were free, but they were not going to
leave their friends behind.
Well, McKenna Grace Fitcher says, this has to
be stopped.
How people cannot understand the sickening practise of
(08:00):
torture and killing primates renders me sick.
And that's how we all feel.
And now there is an opportunity and I
want to be careful.
Of course, this is breaking news.
A lot is happening in Washington right now.
And the first thing I want to say
is that animal experimentation has long been a
bipartisan problem.
(08:21):
Okay.
We're not talking politics right now.
I can tell you the monkeys being tortured
in these laboratories do not care whether the
people who get them out are Democrats, Republicans,
conservatives, liberals, libertarians, socialists, Green Party members, or
what have you.
They just want to get the electroids out
(08:42):
of their brains.
They want to get out of the cages.
Now, because there is a massive move to
cut federal budgets in Washington, D.C., we
have what I would call a unique opportunity
to get this message out and say, if
you're going to cut, the first place that
(09:05):
you should cut is these ridiculous experiments.
So you may have seen the headlines in
recent days.
National Institute of Health cuts billions of dollars
in biomedical funding effectively immediately.
National Institutes of Health has announced it's slashing
funding for indirect research costs.
(09:25):
The agency estimated that it could save $4
billion by capping indirect costs at 15%.
Well, that I greeted as great news.
The rest of the mainstream media did not
greet it that way.
Time magazine, I think, had the most alarmist
(09:46):
headline of all, saying the NIH budget cuts
are the apocalypse of American science, experts say.
And sure enough, a federal judge has just
blocked the cuts to medical funding.
Again, I want to say very clearly, we're
not talking partisan politics.
This has been a bipartisan catastrophe for decades.
(10:08):
These monkeys have been subjected to the same
research over and over again, you know, cut
up, you know, blinded, addicted to cocaine, terrified
under Republican administrations, Democrat administrations.
It's been happening for decades.
(10:29):
If there is a unique opportunity to end
this, I say let's go for it.
Let's do a little roundtable.
Amy, where are you on this?
Well, I absolutely agree.
And there's, you know, we are wasting billions
and billions of dollars through the National Institutes
of Health every year, doing these horrific experiments
on monkeys, where they are addicted to drugs,
(10:51):
they are, have electrodes implanted in their brains,
all kinds of hideous experiments.
And of course, they're all confined to these
tiny metal cages.
They never feel the warmth of the sun,
they never get freedom, they never get to
live with their families.
And it's all with our taxpayer dollars.
And what's interesting about this move now to
(11:12):
target these indirect research costs, when you look
at who some of the worst offenders are
of having outrageously high indirect research costs, it's
the National Primate Research Centres, the Washington National
Primate Research Centre has 80% of its
funding that gets from the NIH for these
(11:32):
experiments on monkeys are in this indirect cost
bucket, which means it's not the expenses for
the needs of the research itself, it kind
of covers the administration costs.
And it's, it's so high, because it costs
a lot of money just to keep the
lights on in a facility where you are
housing these sensitive animals.
(11:54):
And so PETA saying we need to be
focussing on the worst offenders that are wasting
the most amount of money, and are constantly
breaking federal animal welfare laws, they're led by
people who have been found to have research
misconduct.
These places are terrible for animals, they're not
well run.
(12:14):
And they're the most giant waste of money.
So that's where we really want to focus
the most of getting just this fraud taken
care of.
So where, where are we?
Again, getting back to what McKenna Grace Fitcher
said, this has to be stopped.
How people cannot understand the sickening practise of
torture and killing done to these primates renders
(12:36):
me sick.
But I have to say, Amy, that every
time you try to cut these budgets, people
scream, Oh, my God, America is going to
lose its place in science.
Oh, my God, people are going to die,
never really talking about the fact that at
least 95% of the experiments on animals
(12:58):
are completely useless when it comes to human
beings.
Because guess what, we don't have tails, we
don't have paws.
We don't have claws.
Dogs will die if they eat too much
chocolate or grapes.
That doesn't apply to people.
So Dr. Lisa Jones Engel, what can we
do in this unique opportunity where there is
(13:20):
budget cutting going on in Washington, D.C.
to make sure that these wasteful experiments are
priority number one?
You know what?
I think that what we're seeing now is
maybe an extinction level event for primate users,
particularly in the National Primate Research Centres.
But anyone who is experimenting on primates, it's
(13:41):
the amount of money that's being spent and
the amount, the consistent level of failures, everyone
sees that now.
And I think this is going through and
shutting down the National Primate Research Centres, these
facilities.
So keep in mind, when a monkey is
in a cage, there's only one thing that
they're thinking about, and that's how do I
get out?
(14:02):
And so these indirect costs are part of
these are kind of measures to try to
keep the animals in, to make sure that
all the doors are secure, that the cages
are strong, that the staff is there, that
everything is in place.
But the monkeys are consistently figuring it out.
Alpha genesis monkeys leave, UW Primate Centre monkeys
leave.
Every single primate centre sees these animals escaping.
(14:25):
And I think with that transparency and with
the clear evidence that the science is failing,
do we have an HIV vaccine?
No.
Do we have a malaria vaccine?
Do we have a TB vaccine?
No.
But for decades, every one of those vaccines
have been developed and supposedly tested safe in
monkeys in these facilities.
And every single time that fails.
(14:48):
And I think what has happened is that
on both sides of the aisle, the politicians
are saying enough, enough of wasting taxpayer dollars.
If we want good science, there's better ways
to get science, to get good results than
to put a monkey in a cage and
expect that animal that we have not shared
a common ancestor with for 24 million years
(15:10):
to give us any information, any reliable, translatable
information about ourselves.
So I'm, I, I think this is it.
This is the animal experimenters in institutions were
always considered the rainmakers because they brought in
multi-million dollar grants with these massive indirect
(15:30):
costs attached to them that the institutions were
like, yummy.
I'll just, I'll eat, eat all of this
up.
But that, that tap is going to be
turned off.
And then the institutions, the, the harm benefit
analysis, they're going to be forced to do,
you know, the benefit of getting a lot
of money from monkey studies versus the harm,
which is, you know, the outrage, the, the
(15:52):
uncertainness of the reliability of the research of
the, of people suing them for, for their
bad actions.
That's those harms really quickly outweighing the benefits.
So, okay.
What can we do with the backlash against
the proposed cuts?
Again, if you're just joining us, there's so
much breaking news on this front right now,
(16:14):
but the bottom line is that due to,
again, this is a bipartisan issue.
I'm not talking politics, partisan politics.
I'm talking, get the monkeys out of the
cages, get all these animals out of the
cages.
So due to a new administration wanting to
slash federal funding, the National Institutes of Health
(16:38):
cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding effective
immediately.
That's a headline.
Okay.
But what happened was just very recently there
was a huge backlash.
And for example, Time Magazine saying it's the
apocalypse of American science and a federal judge
(16:59):
has at least temporarily blocked the current administration
from making these cuts to these research programmes.
And so where does that leave us now,
Amy?
I mean, how can we get to the
powers that be and make the point that,
hey, and it doesn't matter whether you think
(17:20):
a broken clock is right twice a day
or the law of unintended consequences, however you
want to analyse this in your mind, this
particular cut is good.
We're wasting billions of dollars, torturing millions of
animals and nothing to see from it.
I'll just say 30 years ago, 30 years
(17:42):
ago, I was asked by a very big
organisation to lead a walk, okay, for a
cure of some sort.
I'm not going to identify the organisation, so
don't take any hints from that.
And we went to lunch and I started
asking questions.
I said, well, what are you doing with
the money?
I said, do you do animal experimentation?
Before I left the restaurant, I got a
(18:03):
message.
You're off the hook.
You don't have to lead that march anymore.
We don't want you.
See, when you start asking questions, they don't
want you.
That was 30 years ago.
So I tell people, ask questions, but what
can we do at this particularly crucial juncture,
(18:23):
Amy, to make sure that the folks who
are, let's face it, they're laughing all the
way to the bank with this money coming
into the universities.
How can we counteract that narrative?
I mean, I think that it is important
to keep sharing information.
Go to PETA.org.
You can learn about what is happening at
(18:44):
the National Primate Research Centres like the one
at the University of Washington.
And you can take simple action steps, right,
on those pages on PETA.org to encourage
the National Institutes of Health to stop funding
these primate research centres.
The judge has at least stalled right now
this across-the-board cut that would impact
(19:05):
other research too, not only experiments done on
animals, but where we could at least find
like the most easy cut, I think, is
to stop funding these primate research centres that
are not only wasting millions and millions of
dollars every year.
They are torturing thousands of monkeys.
They have been found to violate Federal Animal
(19:26):
Welfare Act dozens of times, including some really,
really gross ones and just really heinous ones,
like leaving a monkey in a cage when
they put it through this high-pressure, high
-heat cage washer killing them.
They are just a mess.
And so go to PETA.org to take
(19:46):
action or go beyond that and send an
email to your member of Congress saying, I
support cutting funding for these places.
Let's have the National Institutes of Health cut
funding to these experiments on monkeys.
So many of them are now endangered monkeys.
(20:07):
We are literally decimating the forests and their
natural homes of these animals to be experimenting
on them here.
Let's put an end to all of this
and save taxpayer money in the process.
I mean, when you look at these animals
in the wild, their innocence, their beauty, obviously
(20:27):
they love their fellow monkeys.
They live in family groups.
What we're doing is, I don't even have
words for it, mediaeval, barbaric, psychotic.
Yes, that's what it is.
And again, these experiments are not accomplishing anything.
(20:48):
We are in the 21st century.
There are organs on a chip.
We look at things from the molecular and
the submolecular level.
You don't need to be injecting cocaine into
these monkeys.
Just the number of experiments.
Amy, can you give us a list of
some of the most ridiculous, and they're all
(21:11):
ridiculous in my book, but I know there
was this one experiment where they would make
the monkeys pregnant and then take the babies
away and then scare the mama monkey with
all sorts of rattlesnakes and then drug the
mama monkey so the baby couldn't wake mama
up.
I mean, it's something out of a horror
movie.
It's out of like The Exorcist or one
(21:35):
of these slasher movies.
That's really what's going on.
I think these experimenters need to have psychological
evaluations, in my opinion.
Yeah.
I mean, that one is particularly awful.
There's no such thing as an illegal experiment
on animals in this country.
Whatever they can dream up, if they can
(21:57):
get their committee friends to agree with it,
it happens.
You see all kinds of silly research going
on.
It's just clearly, why do we need to
be doing this when we don't?
There's so much just curiosity-driven experiments.
I know I live in Oregon, and the
Oregon National Primate Research Centre, I remember reading
a story about experimenters who were giving THC
(22:21):
to monkeys and then attaching these electrodes to
their penises to see what the sperm count
level does with different amounts of THC in
their system.
It's just completely irrelevant to anything, to any
type of cure that people are hoping for.
And we have experimenters who are taking babies
away from their mothers and then making it
(22:43):
so that they never see a face, even
a human face for the first year of
their life to see how much that messes
them up and their eyesight up.
These are terrible, awful experiments.
What's really particularly tragic with primate experiments to
me is that some of these monkeys are
(23:05):
living in these conditions for decades.
Some of these monkeys, we read a story
recently of a University of Washington, who this
monkey's life started in Madison in a laboratory.
Then they went with this experimenter, Michelle Basso,
to UCLA, and then she went to Seattle.
And so this monkey was born in 1994
(23:26):
and was just killed a couple years ago.
These monkeys can live so many years, and
it's just every single day is horror beyond
the experiments, beyond the terrible things happening in
the experiment itself.
It's unconscionable to think of these highly social
animals living alone in a stainless steel cage
where the lights come on at the same
(23:48):
time each day, they go off each time
each day, and they have no control over
their life at all.
The only thing they can control is tearing
out their own hair or eating their own
fingers because they're driven so mad by these
conditions.
It just needs to end.
It can end.
(24:08):
It should end.
Maybe we actually will be seeing this now
that there is real talk of the funding
being stopped.
That's why this is all happening.
It's all about the money.
If we target the money, I have hope
that this is how we can start making
a really serious impact on not having so
many monkeys being tortured and killed in these
(24:30):
places.
Well, I agree.
I don't care why you're trying to stop
it.
If you have an irrational reason for stopping,
I don't care.
Stop it.
Let's stop it.
I want to go to another breaking news
story.
There's so many breaking news stories on the
primate experimentation front.
PETA has led the way trying to stop
(24:51):
an outrageous plan to put 30,000 monkeys
in a small town in Georgia, and the
people there are up in arms.
Let's watch a local news report that was
very well done on the issue that we're
going to discuss on the other side.
A year later, Bainbridge neighbours are still voicing
(25:12):
their concerns about a monkey facility project by
pulling out all the stops.
These are the cages that the monkeys will
be transported in if we don't put a
stop to this.
Even county leaders who originally voted for the
project but later rescinded their vote spoke out
at a monkey expo Thursday night.
(25:33):
And I said early on we made a
mistake.
As the fate of the primate facility hangs
in the balance of the courts, Bainbridge residents
say they're hopeful they can shut down the
project.
We're standing that it's not going to come
here.
We don't want it here.
Lena Allen, WALV, your hometown news source.
(25:53):
Thank you for that report.
We appreciate it.
So, Amy, what's the latest on that breaking
story?
Yeah, well, I mean, that latest, that was
a town hall.
It was about a year after this fight
started, and as you can see in the
video, it's still packed.
These local residents are not giving up in
Bainbridge.
They are fighters.
(26:14):
They are set on keeping this terrible project
that would be imprisoning 30,000 monkeys when
it's at full capacity in their town, which
only has like 9,000 humans in it.
So they're fighting so hard, and there are
now four ongoing lawsuits related to this case
to try to stop it.
(26:35):
So there's lawsuits trying to get at the
lack of transparency that was involved from city
leaders in bringing this project to their community,
and then there's also a lawsuit, a nuisance
case talking about all the ways that this
would create a nuisance for the people, especially
right around where the proposed facility is taking
(26:55):
place.
And now we even see the state of
Georgia stepping up and trying to undo some
of this mess, too, and trying to appeal
it to the Georgia Supreme Court to undo
this terrible bond deal, which was like the
sweetheart package of money to give this brand
new company to bring this dreadful project to
(27:16):
Bainbridge.
So I have to play the response given
to that particular local news outlet from the
folks who want to create this.
Safer Human Medicine is excited to collaborate with
the Development Authority to advance this project.
Support for this project is growing, with many
residents from Decatur County already expressing strong interest
in job opportunities.
(27:37):
What is your response to that?
We'll start with Amy, then we'll go to
Lisa.
Well, I mean, even the locals who I
met with there and who I continue to
meet with it, it's hard to find anyone
in Bainbridge who actually wants us there.
I very much have doubts about their statement
itself, and people just realise that this is
not only a matter of cruelty to the
(27:59):
animals.
For the people there, it threatens their water
system because of how many monkeys would be
in this monkey factory farm.
It threatens their way of life.
It threatens the potential disease outbreak in these
facilities.
It's just a complete mess, and I think
that we're going to stop it.
(28:20):
I fully think it is going to be
stopped.
These people are not backing down.
They, like I said, they are fighters and
they're not backing down.
And how does the whole budget cut initiative
in Washington dovetail with that?
Because a lot of the experiments that these
monkeys, these poor monkeys would be used in,
(28:41):
would be taxpayer funded through the National Institutes
of Health, which is the largest funder of
animal experimentation in the world.
Lisa?
Exactly.
I mean, what, you know, Safer Human Medicine
was supposed to have had their first monkey
out the door for sale in December, and
they haven't laid a single brick because this
town is not going to let them do
(29:02):
that.
They're going to use every resource they have
to stop this facility from coming to ground.
And I think what Safer Human Medicine is
also not being forthright about is that the
use of primates in the pharmaceutical industry, which
is who they would be selling these monkeys
to, the clients are not using as many
(29:23):
monkeys as they used to.
The value, and I put that in big
air quotes, of these monkeys has dropped precipitously.
This, you know, they thought this was going
to be a massive moneymaker, and it's not
going to be.
The demand is drying up, the supply is
changing, and the awareness that people have of
alternatives is meaning that the scientific community themselves
(29:46):
are saying, no, I'm not going to waste
my time and money and resources on a
monkey model.
I'm going to use a human relevant model,
and they are.
And so, you know, Safer Human Medicine has
lost this one here in Georgia.
They're clinging on with their fingernails, but I
don't see how they're ever going to be
able to go forward with this.
(30:07):
Well, I want to say we invite Safer
Human Medicine or any of the experimenters on
primates or other animals that have been mentioned
on anytime.
I would love to dialogue with them.
Now, let's talk about what PETA has done
in terms of creating a roadmap for research
modernisation.
(30:28):
Again, newsflash to all those animal experimenters out
there, we're in the 21st century, and there
are plenty of more sophisticated and more modern
methods of doing science than the mediaeval practise
of torturing animals.
You know, they've been breaking dog spinal cords
since before Christ to see what happens, and
(30:48):
they're still doing it.
And nothing has changed in a lot of
ways.
It's so crazy that people buy this.
But let's check out PETA's plan for research
modernisation.
Did you know that 95% of new
drugs fail in human trials?
All had passed animal testing, but ended up
being either harmful or useless for the people
(31:10):
who needed them.
We need to end this waste, and we
need to do it now.
Research Modernisation Now, a roadmap developed by scientists,
will shift science away from pointless and cruel
experiments on animals, and toward life-saving research
that can really help humans.
Discover three ways you can stop wasting lives
and tax funds today.
(31:31):
So tell us, Amy, about PETA's roadmap for
research modernisation now.
Yeah, well, it's really the only comprehensive and
common sense strategy for carefully replacing animal experiments
with things like organs on a chip, artificial
intelligence, sophisticated computer modelling.
(31:52):
And what it really builds in is just
some priorities of first stopping the experiments on
animals where there is profound and expansive evidence
that it is not working, where the numbers
are even higher than that 95% failure
of drugs rate.
And then it also builds in a plan
(32:15):
for training, of training new scientists in these
better, more human-relevant models.
It's really a wonderful comprehensive plan, and this
is something that is so easy for people
to take action to support this effort.
You can go to PETA.org, and it's
really easy if you're a US citizen.
You can take action to send a letter
(32:37):
to your member of Congress to support this
effort.
It's really, it would encompass everything.
It doesn't, it's not only just about research
happening on universities, experiments on animals happening at
universities, but it's also about just the whole
picture and really changing our priorities, especially through
(32:58):
the National Institutes of Health, like we've been
talking about.
This would get at the big picture, start
getting cures faster, and stop torturing animals in
needless experiments.
But you hit on a very important point.
This is holding back life-saving research because
it doesn't work.
So doing it over and over again and
(33:19):
torturing all these animals, some of these experiments
have gone on for decades, doing the same
exact thing over and over again, because as
I understand it, Dr. Lisa, it's easy to
come up with a project that involves killing
animals.
Like, well, we're going to find out whether,
how long it takes 50% of these
animals to die.
It takes a lot more creativity to come
(33:41):
up with something that is not just, oh,
here's the death toll, and what might that
or might not have that, have an impact
on humans.
You know what, they call it science, but
it's really, it's just monkey business.
It is about the business of using primates.
(34:01):
I'm a primatologist, so I speak mostly about
the primates, but it's about how do you
squeeze the most out of these monkeys to
kind of prop up your business or to
generate your next publication?
It's not science, it's a business.
And these monkeys have paid the price for
this for more than a century, and it's
(34:23):
going to stop.
And I think when the taxpayer realises that
they too are paying the price, they're paying
for the monkey, they're paying for the infrastructure,
they're paying these massive salaries for these experimenters
and the administrators, they're going to say, no,
that's not what I pay my taxes for.
(34:45):
I pay my taxes to do good research,
to do sound research.
And so I think that this move to
really dramatically reduce the IDCs, it is going
to hit the animal researchers the heaviest because
they are the biggest consumers of these resources.
(35:05):
And I think the scientific and the political
community are done with that.
Well, a very interesting point by Milofar Ashgarian,
the animal experimental industrial complex has to fall.
It is a complex.
And I have to say being in the
media, the media is part of the complex.
(35:26):
Again, if you look at the media coverage
of the NIH proposed funding cuts, you'd think
the sky was falling.
Oh my God, it's the end of the
world, an apocalypse, blah, blah, blah.
But when you try to tell these same
media organisations, right, that, hey, look at the
(35:48):
stats, look at the outcomes, more than 95
% of these experiments do not work.
Basically, you're ignored.
I wish you weren't.
But how are we going to do with
the media coverage, Amy?
I think that's a great question, Jane.
I wish I knew the answer.
But it's interesting to me that you even
(36:11):
see people who are defenders of the NIH,
they recognise a lot of the problems that
the NIH has, even the people who defend
it.
There is other issues beyond the animals being
tortured that concern people.
There is duplication happening across the country.
There is research misconduct happening that people are
(36:33):
being caught for.
There's all kinds of issues.
It should be, I think that it has
been clear to a lot of people, even
the most staunch supporters, that there needs to
be some significant reforms at the NIH.
And, you know, maybe just this kind of
blanket sweep option is what has people so
upset and afraid.
(36:54):
And it was so fast.
And usually, government is very slow to do
anything.
So maybe that's part of why we're seeing
the reaction we are.
But yeah, it is just a challenge with
media, Jane.
And a lot of them, you know, rely
on some of these very industries that are
making a lot of money.
(37:14):
These universities are really powerful with local media,
with local politicians.
And so it was not a surprise at
all that we saw just the next business
day, 22 states had joined this lawsuit to
try to stop the cuts that are being
proposed at the NIH.
You know, they're fighting against it, which I
(37:35):
wasn't really surprised to see, to be honest.
This is, it means a lot of money
to basically every state.
Well, also the media, if you look at
the TV commercials, it's pharmaceuticals.
There's a huge, huge pharmaceutical.
I personally think it's crazy that we have
advertising that says, ask your doctor for this
(37:57):
pill.
Hello?
The doctors are supposed to assess what's wrong
with you and make a recommendation.
You're not supposed to go to the doctor
like you're some drug addict looking for a
drug pusher to give you your fix.
You're supposed to go to a doctor and
the doctor is supposed to say, okay, I
think this is what's wrong with you.
This is what you should do.
But we've turned that on its head with
(38:18):
these commercials.
And so of course, you're going to see
the media reacting in the way it's reacting.
Oh, the sky's falling, these budget cuts.
It's all the pillars, all the pillars of
government and our democracy have been overtaken by
these industries.
And it's the courts to a certain degree,
(38:41):
we'll see what the courts do.
It's the media, which is the fourth estate.
And it's the members of Congress as well
who get, I believe the pharmaceutical industry is
the largest, has the largest number of lobbyists
in Washington.
Lisa?
I mean, one of the other things we
(39:03):
haven't really touched on, but now that you
brought up the pharmaceutical industry on this, now
this industry has been bringing in tens of
thousands of monkeys from Asia and Mauritius every
year.
And these animals have been arriving into the
US infected with multiple strains of tuberculosis, with
deadly diarrhoeal pathogens, with a tier one select
agent.
(39:24):
This industry is actually more likely to trigger
the next pandemic than it is to provide
meaningful improvements in human health.
And trying to get the media to talk
about that, that's been a real uphill battle
as well.
But that's the thing I think, and it's
not just the pharmaceutical industry, within the primate
centres themselves, we get reports of workers who
(39:47):
get infected with things like Shigella or MRSA
or tuberculosis.
This is an incredibly dangerous industry, certainly for
the monkeys, but also for the people who
are working in it, which in large part
is why this industry really has a terrible
time maintaining staffing.
Wow.
Well, you know, there's a lot of talk
(40:07):
these days about the 80-20 rule, that
80% of outcomes are determined by 20
% of inputs.
And that's where I see abusive animals across
the board.
Our abuse of animals is creating at least
80% of the problems that we're dealing
with societally.
I mean, whether you're talking about the pandemics,
it doesn't matter whether you think it started
in the Wuhan wet market where they were
(40:28):
torturing animals to chop them up to sell
them to be eaten, or you thought it
started in the Wuhan lab where they were
torturing animals in their various tests.
It was animal torture.
Now we've got the bird flu.
And the list goes on and on.
Certainly the health care costs as a result
of our unhealthy diet, which is subsidised by
(40:50):
the US government in its subsidies of commodity
crops that are fed to animals and subsidies
of farmers, bailing them out for natural disasters,
et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, the list goes on and on
of all the problems that are created by
our government's subsidy of animal abuse.
And I just hope that even if the
(41:11):
people who are looking at this do not
care about animals at all, they're only trying
to cut the budget, that they look at
all of this.
And of course, particularly the abuse of animals
and specifically primates.
You know, I guess I wanted to ask,
how is PETA able to weigh in on
this debate right now?
(41:32):
Is there a way to get to those
people who are making those decisions and say,
hey, here's another reason why you should cut
or not?
Amy?
Yeah, absolutely.
We are working on getting our information to
as many people as we can who are
in positions of power.
We are always trying to get our good,
(41:53):
solid, scientifically backed information to people in power
and making it so that the agenda they're
wanting to push is one that could help
animals.
That is something, this could be doing so
much good for animals in laboratories.
If they want to look at cutting funding
to the NIH, there's so much that could
(42:15):
be done to cut funding that is just
torturing animals.
They've been doing it decade after decade, countless
animals dead with nothing to show for it.
We've talked about how devastating it is for
the animals, for the workers inside of these
places, but it's also devastating for all of
us because we don't have the cures that
(42:35):
we all are desperately hoping for ourselves or
our family or our friends.
If we can embrace PETA's research modernisation now
and start investing instead in these more human
relevant forms of research and put all those
billions of dollars we're wasting, tormenting 100 million
animals every year, if we funnel that instead
(42:56):
to these human relevant research models, we're going
to get to those answers that we all
are looking for much faster and without torturing
and killing anyone in the process.
Well, from your mouth to God's ear, I
hope that this all comes together.
Again, it is just a really unique opportunity.
(43:22):
Amira John says, one has to be a
sadist to work in this industry and totally
out of touch with reality.
If this was about science, they would have
discovered another way long ago.
Yes, it really is about money and it's
about basically people who are living lavish lifestyles
(43:44):
off of government funding, doing these nonsensical experiments
that are incredibly cruel over and over again,
and the universities encourage it because they get
a that's exactly what it is.
When you get your grant from the National
(44:04):
Institutes of Health and you say, all right,
it's going to cost me a half million
dollars over a year for five years to
do whatever experiments that I'm planning on these
monkeys.
The university, I'll speak to the University of
Washington because that's the one where I was
working at and most familiar with, NIH gives
them another 83 cents on that dollar for
(44:26):
these indirect costs.
The incentive for the university to keep this
gravy train rolling is astonishing.
The incentive for the investigator, the experimenter to
end up with a $200,000, $300,000,
$400,000 annual salary as they are just
(44:47):
grinding through this taxpayer money, it's all been
laid out there for them.
This has been the standard.
This has been what's been acceptable for decades
and what happened last week, earlier this week,
when the idea that that gravy train would
be cut off, people are terrified.
(45:10):
There will be impacts to some of the
science, but there are some areas of science,
particularly in the National Research Centres, you could
wipe those out tomorrow.
You could end all of that funding tomorrow,
get those animals into sanctuary, retrain, redirect those
scientists into meaningful, relevant fields of science, and
we would all be better for that.
(45:32):
Wow.
Well, from your mouth to God's ear, as
they say, let's hope that happens.
I've been just grappling with this unique opportunity
that comes along.
You don't expect, well, what's going to happen?
Boom, there's just this window.
How do we get to the powers that
be to make sure that this funding is
(45:55):
cut?
You have, for example, the Cargo Act, which
I think is an incredible idea that Pete
has come up with, which essentially says these
overseas research labs that taxpayers are funding here
in the United States, they've got to go.
There's one particularly horrific example that PETA uncovered
(46:19):
for two decades.
This lab was run in Columbia, monkeys left
in their waste, left to die from infected
wounds.
The NIH, which funded, never inspected this laboratory.
The NIH is using our tax dollars to
bankroll these hell holes.
This isn't a lab.
(46:39):
This isn't science.
This is a nightmare.
PETA shut this lab down and wants to
shut all the other labs around the world
that our tax dollars are funding shut down.
That's why I think everybody should support the
Cargo Act.
I know if you go to PETA.org,
(47:01):
you can actually also use your...
What I love about PETA is that in
two seconds, you can send a letter.
They've got it down to a fine science
where sometimes, once you sign up, I'll get
these texts.
Here, just hit Y and it sends a
dozen letters to members of Congress.
You definitely want to go to PETA.org
(47:23):
and get on their list so that I
get emails, whatever I'm doing, and I get
an email from PETA and I'm busy, let
me tell you.
I stop what I'm doing because I know
in 30 seconds, I'll be able to send
a message to a whole bunch of members
of Congress or whoever else you've suggested that
we reach out to.
It's like this, boom, boom, boom, and it's
(47:45):
done.
That's why it's important to sign up to
PETA.org so that you get on that
list because it's a numbers game.
Is it not, Amy?
You're absolutely right.
As someone who spent a lot of time
as a grassroots activist before joining PETA, I
honestly really underestimated the power of these simple
(48:05):
actions that don't take me any time.
It is, like you said, just the push
of a button and this letter is going
to my member of Congress because I put
in my address.
You don't have to know who your member
of Congress is to encourage them to support
the Cargo Act.
You just go to PETA.org, look for
the Cargo Act and put in your address
and it will do that all for you.
(48:27):
Coming on the primate side of things, sometimes
we have a hard time getting a response
from an agency.
They are not responding to us.
We are trying to work nicely with them.
We'll send out an action alert to our
members to say, hey, push this button, send
this email, we need the Fish and Wildlife
or whoever to pay attention to us.
Then sometimes the next day, they're finally calling
(48:50):
me after me trying for months to get
a hold of them.
They're saying, okay, make these emails stop.
What do you want?
It's so important.
It might feel like maybe you don't realise
how important it is, but from our side
of things, this is how we create change
is just this mass mobilisation of people.
(49:10):
There's all kinds of ways to get involved.
PETA.org, though, like you said, Jane, that's
just one easy way you could be getting
involved every day.
Yes.
I love it because a lot of times
the things that we're working on, we don't
know what the impact is going to be.
We don't know if there's a finish line.
Every time I hit that button with PETA,
I know, oh, something's gotten done.
(49:32):
I've hit the finish line, which is so
rare with animal activism.
A lot of times you can do a
lot of things and not know what the
impact is.
By the way, we have a very, very
special guest watching.
Jenny Desmond says, thanks for all the amazing
work to PETA.
She runs the Liberian chimpanzee rescue with her
(49:54):
husband.
They have an incredible story where they literally
upended their lives.
Her husband's a veterinarian to go to Liberia
after a whole lot of chimps were abandoned
by the New York Blood Centre.
There was a huge controversy.
Finally, after a lot of activists I was
(50:17):
there for a few, did die-ins and
protests, the New York Blood Centre did agree
to pay for the care of the monkeys
as they should have from day one.
Then all these other orphan monkeys started coming
in and Jenny Desmond and her husband stayed
in Liberia where they are to this day
(50:38):
caring for all these other orphan monkeys, orphaned
from the illegal pet trade, from the bushmeat
trade, et cetera, et cetera.
Great work, Jenny.
We love you and I'm so excited that
you are watching our show.
She's probably watching from Liberia, which is great.
(50:59):
People watch from all around the world.
We've only got a few minutes, perhaps since
there are so many breaking news stories surrounding
the chimpanzee issue, how would you sum it
up?
What are your final thoughts, Dr. Lisa?
We're at a critical point.
(51:19):
We've seen the scientific community move away here
in the U.S. from using chimpanzees.
We saw that a decade ago.
The scientists said they weren't giving us the
use of chimps, wasn't giving us the answers,
the data that we needed.
Ethically, it was a problem.
Those animals were then on the Endangered Species
Act.
The industry pivoted towards monkeys, towards macaques, and
(51:41):
we saw a huge burst of grabbing those
animals from everywhere around the world.
We're at that next inflexion point.
Everything is now saying we need to be
done completely with primates.
The money is drying up.
The populations of animals are drying up.
We've got better scientific ways of getting the
(52:02):
information we need.
We now know of the public health risks
that are associated with using these primates.
Jane, I think we're at that cusp.
It just takes people asking the questions, digging
in, sending the emails, being very vocal about
this is not how I want my money
(52:23):
used.
That'll get us to the next step where
we'll see every one of these animals who
have been used in experimentation in the U
.S., all these primates, they deserve a happy
ending, and that would be in sanctuary.
That's what I'm wanting to see soon.
(52:43):
Amy, what are your final thoughts?
I think, like you said, Jane, there's just
so much happening, so much news constantly.
I really encourage folks to follow PETA.org
for the latest.
We expect more news coming in the upcoming
weeks.
We will be staying on top of things
to make sure we are making the most
use out of every current event to make
(53:05):
sure that everything is focused as much as
we can on shutting down these places and,
like Lisa said, getting these remaining victims to
places of sanctuary where they can finally live
like the monkeys that they are.
I will say my final thought is right
now we have to do everything that we
can to reach the powers that be who
(53:26):
want to cut funding and say this is
the area to cut.
I was reading an article about how one
individual posted something on X about what he
felt was ridiculous government spending, and it caught
the eye of the owner of X, Elon
Musk, who is the head of DOGE, the
Department of Government Efficiency, or worse to that
(53:49):
effect, and the cut then ended up making
headlines.
I think we are in the same position.
That does not mean we endorse every single
cut.
Again, I want to say that the monkeys
do not care what your political allegiance is,
whether you are Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, libertarian,
socialist, Green Party, whatever.
(54:10):
They just want to get out of the
cages.
They want to get those electrodes out of
their brains.
They want to stop the torture.
Frankly, it is torture for us.
It is torture for me personally to know
that these animals are being tortured and that
my tax dollars have to go to it.
I would do anything to make it stop.
Make it stop.
(54:31):
It is just too stupid.
It is too stupid more than anything else.
We have got to end it.
I just want to thank all of you
for being a part of this broadcast.
These are two very, very busy people, and
they took the time out of their very
busy schedule to talk to us and bring
(54:54):
us up to date.
I always say, please download the Unchained TV
app.
We are the world's only free non-profit
vegan streaming television network, animal rights streaming television
network.
We are on your phone.
We are also on your TV.
It is on there behind me.
It is also on your tablet.
(55:15):
I really appreciate everybody downloading it.
It is 100% free.
It is a way to stay up to
date with the animal rights movement as it
happens.
It is a vegan Netflix.
That is the thing I have ever heard.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained TV.
Your life will change.
(55:36):
It is just that easy.
Unchained TV has all sorts of content for
everybody.
Unchained TV changed my life.
Unchained TV is crushing it.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained TV is my go-to.
Unchained TV.
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