Image by SOKO Tierschutz and Cruelty Free International

The letter below is from ADAV advisor, Dr. Maidie Hilmo and was published in the Times Colonist on Nov 23, 2024.

Remember Emily Carr’s beloved monkey named Woo? What if it had been sent to a laboratory after the Victoria artist’s death?

The fact that some 43 young female monkeys escaped (only to be recaptured) from an American breeding facility for primates destined to be sold to research laboratories all over the world has cast an interesting light on the relevance and ethics of our relationship to our primate cousins.

If they are like people, then the same moral rights not to be experimented on should apply to them. If they are not, then the results are not relevant to human health (over 96% of drug tests on animals fail in human clinical trials.)

Apparently the frisky escaped monkeys still kept communicating with the monkeys inside the facility. Maybe they are like us and have the same social bonds, as did Woo and Emily. Would you allow members of your family to be isolated in metal cages and subjected to unimaginable pain and deprivation before being killed?