National Primate Liberation Week (NPLW) 2004 was even
larger and more successful than last year’s event with activists
participating in more than 20 cities across the U.S. News conferences,
protests, rallies, tabling, and other events revealed the truth about
primate experimentation on a huge scale to the public.
During NPLW 2004, we released our newest investigative
report: Primate Experimentation in the U.S.: The Facts We Weren’t
Supposed to Know. This landmark report revealed that over 96,000
primates suffer in U.S. labs annually at a cost to taxpayers of over
$1.1 billion. The SAEN report reveals that the number of primates
imprisoned in labs has risen 42% in the last five years and the number
of primate-based grants funded by the NIH has risen 55% over the same
period. The report also reveals that as many as 35% of all primates
within laboratories experience some level of social isolation.
Also, in this report substantial abuses of primates
are exposed at: Northwestern, University of Pittsburgh, University of
Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, Emory, Wake Forest, Duke, Yale, Harvard,
McLean Hospital, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center,
University of California -- San Francisco & Davis, University of
Washington (Seattle), and University of Wisconsin (Madison).
National Primate Liberation Week 2004 events took
place in Atlanta (GA), Birmingham (AL), Nashville (TN), Flagstaff (AZ),
Washington DC, Raleigh & Durham (NC), San Diego, Los Angeles, Berkeley &
San Francisco (CA), Honolulu (HI), Kansas City (KS), Baltimore (MD), Southboro/Boston (MA), St. Louis (MO), New York City, Portland (OR),
Houston, (TX), Salt Lake City (UT), and Madison (WI).
Media coverage of NPLW was substantial and widespread.
Examples from many cities including: Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Los
Angeles, and Kansas City are in the media coverage section of our
website at www.saenonline.org
.
NPLW 2004 protest at the National Institutes of Health
For this week long event Michael Budkie, SAEN’s
Executive Director, traveled to Baltimore, Washington (DC), Raleigh &
Durham (NC), Atlanta (GA), Birmingham (AL), and Nashville (TN) to work
with local groups to expose primate experimentation. He was also a guest
on a radio show in Houston, TX which discussed the cruelty and abuse
which is a part of all experiments on primates.
We would like to sincerely thank all of the activists
and organizations whose hard work made this event such a success. We
look forward to working with everyone again in 2005!
You can still be a part of the effectiveness of
NPLW 2004. Contact your federal senators and representatives and ask
them to reduce the funding for primate experimentation as it is
supported through the National Institutes of Health. You can find their
contact information at:
www.house.gov
www.senate.gov