rewards

Harvard Experimenter Tortures Newborn Monkeys With Constant Strobe Effect—Help Us Stop Her!

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PETA has learned that Harvard University experimenter Margaret Livingstone—who has sewn baby monkeys’ eyelids shut for up to a year—has somehow sunk even lower into the depths of cruelty. 😰 We need your help stopping her before more monkeys suffer! 🐒 ❤️

In her latest test, Livingstone snatches newborn monkeys from their mothers and forces them to wear goggles that create an unrelenting and disorienting strobe effect. 😡 Imagine constantly seeing this effect—like the ones at shows and clubs—for the first year and a half of your life. This is the reality for the baby monkeys trapped in her lab. 😱

PETA is urging the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative—which is funding these and other tests by Livingstone rn with more than $2 million in taxpayer money—to pull the plug immediately. 🤯 💸 We’re also asking former President Barack Obama, whose administration launched the BRAIN Initiative, to intervene.

But we can’t do it without your help. 💪

Goggles of Gloom

Livingstone proudly gave disturbing deets of her new experiment at a recent Society for Neuroscience meeting. After ripping the baby monkeys away from their mothers, she forces them to wear helmets and goggles with built-in shutters that keep blocking their vision. The shutters rapidly open and close, repeatedly plunging the babies into darkness. 😢

The goggles create an effect like a strobe light. The baby monkeys see only 0.2 seconds of light every second, followed by 0.8 seconds of darkness. Over and over. For up to a year and a half. 😨 Why tf would anyone support this torture?

Once experimenters are satisfied with their torment, they conduct more tests on the monkeys to determine the extent of their brain damage.

Deranged and Unhinged

Livingstone has made a 40-year career of tormenting baby monkeys. In other experiments at Harvard, she’s abducted newborn monkeys from their mothers (yet again) and sewn their eyes shut to see how badly she could damage their brain and visual development. 😤

Hey Marge, what did baby monkeys ever do to you? 🤷

Livingstone seems to get experiment inspo from the nightmarish work of Harry Harlow, who invented a torture device that he called the “pit of despair,” designed to plunge motherless monkeys into depression as quickly and efficiently as possible. Her goggles of gloom would make him—and no one else—proud.

Not a Flicker of Relevance

Livingstone’s latest experiment allegedly studies how early life experiences change brain and visual development. But since her experiment can’t begin to mimic complex real situations for humans, this torment just harms monkeys and wastes taxpayer dollars. 🤦

Baby monkeys don’t deserve this torment at all—please urge NIH’s BRAIN Initiative to stop funding these pointless experiments!

View Message +

John. J

Ngai, Ph.D.

BRAIN Initiative

Message to {contact_data~firstName} {contact_data~lastName}:

I was shocked to learn that my tax dollars are paying for Margaret Livingstone to conduct cruel and pointless experiments on baby monkeys at Harvard Medical School.

In her experiments, Livingstone takes baby monkeys away from their mothers, forces them to wear specially crafted helmets with goggles that have shutters that repeatedly open and close, creating a strobe light–like effect. This ordeal is extremely stressful for the monkeys, and they’re subjected to this for the first year and a half of their lives.

These experiments contradict the core mission of the BRAIN Initiative, aimed at “revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain” with “a common goal of accelerating the development of neurotechnologies.” They employ counterproductive methodologies, focus on the wrong species, and do nothing to advance human health. I urge you to please pull the BRAIN Initiative’s funding from these experiments and instead invest in human-relevant, non-animal research methods.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,
{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}
{user_data~EMail Address}

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