Written by PETA
Victory: As a result of PETA's campaign, the Army announced that it is ending its cruel use of monkeys in chemical attack training exercises and will instead use advanced human simulators!
Monkey #V357 was born on the island of St. Kitts, where he was either captured in the wild or born in captivity. If he was abducted from his home in the wild, he likely watched trappers shoot his mother out of a tree with a dart gun, and then was ripped from her arms. If he was born into a breeding facility, he was forcibly—and permanently—torn from his screaming mother, probably within days of birth.
He was then crammed into a tiny crate and flown to Miami, Florida, in a plane’s dark, loud and terrifying cargo hold. There, he was piled onto a truck like luggage and driven up the eastern seaboard to the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
#V357, the only “name” the Army gave him in its laboratory, spent the next three years of his life locked in a steel cage and being used over-and-over as a target for nerve-agent attack training. Every eight weeks, experimenters injected him with a massive drug overdose to crudely mimic a chemical attack and trainees looked on as he twitched uncontrollably, sweated profusely, violently convulsed, and struggled to breathe. The psychological distress that this constant physical abuse and confinement caused led #V357 and the other monkeys imprisoned at Aberdeen to fight each other, and he suffered gaping lacerations, a torn lip, and bitten or torn off fingers. The injuries did not stop the training exercises.
After three years of being tormented in this cruel training course, the Army began punishing his small body in a different experiment. They injected him with a chemical agent that severely restricted blood flow to his brain. After one final injection and several hours of suffering, he died at night, alone in his cold, barren cage.
It is too late for #V357, but it’s not too late for the rest of the monkeys the Army is still tormenting in these cruel and ineffective training courses. Please help stop this by signing this White House petition to replace the monkeys with modern, superior human simulators.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
Woody Harrelson was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of an Army captain in The Messenger, and now the actor is sending a real-life message to the Army's new chief of staff regarding the cruel chemical agent poisoning of monkeys at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The star of the hotly anticipated Hunger Games film sent a letter to Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, describing how the monkeys who endure a forced overdose "suffer the wretched symptoms of chemical poisoning, including seizures, breathing difficulties, loss of bowel control, and convulsions," and asking the general to "stop this crude exercise at Aberdeen" and replace it with superior non-animal methods of simulating nerve agent attacks.
Woody's letter follows a PETA protest outside Army Secretary John McHugh's home and as thousands of compassionate people's responses to PETA's action alert—which I must ask you to respond to also and to pass on to everyone you know (get the whole office to sign—the whole neighborhood!).
Please join Woody in sending Army officials the message that not only is the image of America's armed forces tarnished by conducting crude warfare experiments on monkeys—who are snatched from their Caribbean homes and families and who endure frightening shipping conditions—these cruel procedures also violate military policies requiring the use of non-animal methods when available and prohibiting harming primates for training exercises.
Written by Jeff Mackey
PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk appears on CNN to discuss the U.S. Army's upcoming plans to conduct tests on monkeys. You can help stop the U.S. Army from poisoning monkeys by calling Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, commanding general of Aberdeen Proving Ground, at 410-278-0833 and urging his facility to switch to non-animal training methods.
As the U.S. Army is poised to begin poisoning African vervet monkeys at Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground, PETA's "monkeys" descended on Secretary of the Army John McHugh's home to demand that he stop the cruelty.
If McHugh was a little uncomfortable that we were on his front doorstep, perhaps he should think about how uncomfortable the Army makes its primate prisoners, injecting the monkeys with a drug overdose in a crude and cruel attempt to replicate the effects of a nerve agent attack. The drug overdose causes the monkeys to suffer from violent seizures and vomiting, and some even stop breathing. The monkeys are subjected to this abuse every few months for as long as three years.
Military and civilian training programs around the world use sophisticated human patient simulators that can be programmed to mimic the human response to a nerve agent attack, which is very different from a monkey's. Not only are the Army's monkey experiments cruel and inefficient, they also violate Department of Defense policies prohibiting the harming of primates in training exercises and requiring that non-animal methods be used whenever they are available.
We brought the message home today for McHugh. Now you can help stop the U.S. Army from poisoning monkeys by calling Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, commanding general of Aberdeen Proving Ground, at 410-278-0833 and urging his facility to switch to non-animal training methods.
Next week, the U.S. Army plans to start poisoning African vervet monkeys with massive chemical overdoses as part of a crude and cruel "show and tell" training exercise at Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground in order to demonstrate the effects of a nerve-agent attack. The overdoses will cause the monkeys to suffer from uncontrollable twitching, seizures, and vomiting, and some will even stop breathing. In a laboratory worksheet that PETA obtained from Aberdeen, one trainee compared a monkey's violent reaction during the exercise to "a chiwawa [sic] sh*tting razor blades."
Aberdeen is set to receive an additional shipment of 20 vervet monkeys from overseas―a frightening journey for them―in late September, and they could well be subjected to these cruel exercises too.
This is one more example of shortchanging our military and pointlessly abusing animals for some elementary exercise that already exists on film! Other military and civilian training programs around the world are using sophisticated human patient simulators that can be programmed to mimic the human response to a nerve-agent attack, which is very different from a vervet monkey's response. And not only are the Army's monkey laboratories cruel and inefficient, they violate Department of Defense policies that prohibit the harming of primates in training exercises and require that non-animal training methods be used when available.
Please, help stop this by contacting Major General Nick Justice, the commanding general of Aberdeen, right now and asking him to live up to his name and save monkeys from this cruelty by switching this very second to modern, effective medical training methods.
It's a hazy day here on the Right Coast. As I watch leaves fall and steam rise from my soy mocha, the mood is set for a lazy (yet highly skilled) meander through gossip rags for fun stuff. Here are my faves:
Thanks for stopping by! Catch you next time, and don't forget to hug all your vegetarian friends.
Written by Missy Lane
Through the Freedom of Information Act, the Physician's Committeee for Responsible Medicine (PRCM) has obtained video footage of several Department of Defense military trauma training exercises.
In training exercises that are supposed to simulate the effects of a nerve agent attack, monkeys experience seizures and difficulty breathing. In another exercise, live goats are cut open—causing severe bleeding—while the instructor repeatedly acknowledges the differences between the training and human casualties. All this suffering is inflicted in order to train military medics—who would learn more if they were provided with state-of-the-art simulators and rotations in trauma hospitals.
We have been working hard to eliminate these cruel exercises in the U.S. and in countries around the globe. After PETA campaigned against cruel dog stabbings, Bolivia banned all animal use from military training. Now, Georgia Congressmember Hank Johnson, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is calling on the Army to phase out antiquated trauma training on animals.
Urge your congressperson to co-sign Congressmember Hank Johnson's letter and help put an end to the military's war on animals.
Posted by Karin Bennett
Last month, PETA broke the news about barbaric U.S. Army trauma training exercises that were being conducted at a base camp in Hawaii, in which pigs were shot with high-powered rifles. Local Army officials there are standing by their false claims that these exercises are necessary to provide soldiers with the skill to treat trauma victims on the battlefield, even though it seems to us these exercises broke Army regulations by not using available alternatives to the primitive use of animals.
I guess we can sleep well knowing that if a soldier loses his tail during a raid, some well-trained fellow soldiers, thanks to this training, may be able to reattach the necessary posterior appendage.
Given the U.S. Army's apparent outright disregard for their own regulations and the treatment of these animals, PETA is now asking commanding officers at bases in Hawaii and Texas—where a more recent training exercise included breaking and amputating the legs of nearly 1,000 goats with tree trimmers—for a court martial over the shooting, mutilating, and killing of animals during these old-fashioned training exercises.
According to the Army's own regulations, the Army is required to use alternatives to animals in training exercises when scientifically valid and comparable alternatives exist. And they do! The animal exercise should have been replaced with validated, state-of-the-art simulators, such as the Department of Defense's own Combat Trauma Patient Simulator, which more realistically simulates battlefield conditions and, consequently, is considered superior to outdated animal methods. Other viable alternatives include Dr. Emad Aboud's "living" cadaver perfusion model, Simulab Corporation's TraumaMan system, and establishing military level one trauma centers in nearby communities in order to have trainees work with the community to take care of their city's population.
Kathy Guillermo, director of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department, says, "The Army has regulations in place specifically to prevent this kind of cruelty to animals, but the oversight committee apparently chose to ignore them. Our soldiers deserve to be trained using the most advanced technology available—that means using human simulators."
The U.S. Army does not train soldiers to race into battle zones to retrieve injured pigs, goats, or dogs. That would be great, but let's face it: It's not the government's main agenda. Time, money, and resources could be far better spent.
Written by Jennifer Cierlitsky
Do you know the saying "Don't steal—the government hates competition"? I was reminded of it recently when news broke that the U.S. Army is shooting live pigs in an open range with high-power rifles at a training camp in Hawaii. The Army says it's teaching combat medics how to treat battlefield injuries, but here's the thing: The Army is required—by its own regulations—to use alternatives to animals in any kind of experimentation or training when scientifically valid and comparable alternatives exist. And guess what? Those alternatives exist.
My colleague Shalin Gala rattles off these humane alternatives like nobody's business: the Combat Trauma Patient Simulation System, Simulab Corporation's TraumaMan system (insert superhero figure with a T on his chest), partnering with trauma centers for real-life experience, and Dr. Emad Aboud's "living" cadaver perfusion model. Shalin also tells me that he regularly receives calls from whistleblowers in the Army and the Navy telling him about the use of pigs, goats, and monkeys for trauma training and chemical casualty training—all in apparent violation of regulations.
Kathy Guillermo, the director of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department, had this to say: "In order to effectively save our soldiers' lives, Army medics should be trained with human trauma patients and advanced simulators that mimic human responses. Shooting and maiming pigs is as outdated as Civil War rifles."
I agree, but I'm kind of stuck on the fact that the horror of the Army's pig shooting in Hawaii goes way beyond just that. Readers of The PETA Files are well aware that you don't have to be Einstein to get your head around the few paltry regulations intended to protect animals in laboratories, but even so, violations of these regulations are rampant. A recent audit noted that nearly a third of U.S. laboratories are failing to search for alternatives. Is it any wonder when the government—charged with ensuring that laboratories comply with the law—doesn't seem to have its own house in order?
Posted by Grace Friedan
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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