PETA traces the dark history of animal exploitation in laboratories
For immediate release:
August 17, 2021
Contact:
Amanda Hayes 202-483-7382
Washington – Starting from Wednesday, the passers-by at the Washington Monument will be shocked. A giant “spider” will appear on the lawn to represent the realistic-looking fake spiders that National Institutes of Health experimenter Elizabeth Murray uses to torture brain-damaged monkeys in her infamous monkey fright tests – along with PETA’s new exhibition “Without Consent.” which explores the shameful and disgusting history of using animals in painful experiments from the 1920s to the present day.
“Scaring brain-damaged monkeys with fake spiders is just one of the gruesome ways experimenters terrorize other animals because they can,” says PETA Senior Vice President Katy Guillermo. “PETA pulls their dirty deeds out of the shadows and indicates that the ability to exploit others does not give us the right to do so.”
In addition to criticizing Murray’s experiments, the exhibit documents the gruesome work of the experimenters, who stunned cats and cut their spines, shocked dogs so many times that they stopped trying to escape, and took the little monkeys from their mothers and raised them alone in that they called it the “pit of despair.” The exhibition argues that just as society now understands that past experiments on vulnerable people were wrong, such a moral awakening should prompt us to turn our attention to other dissenting living things today.
PETA, whose motto is in part that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes arrogance, a worldview focused on human excellence. For more information please visit PETA.org or subscribe to the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…
The exhibition is located at the intersection of Jefferson Dr. SW and Raoul Wallenberg Pl. SW, and will operate from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm every day until Tuesday 7 September. The Spider will run until Thursday, August 19th. An interactive virtual exhibition is available here.