Monkey Business: The Disturbing Case That Launched the Animal Rights Movement (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)

Documents the case that provided the impetus for forming People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and shows how the organization has changed the way Americans think about animals

Guillermo, lifestyles director for People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, tells how PETA cofounder Alan Pacheco shocked the nation into awareness of animal abuse in the realm of science. In 1981, seeking firsthand knowledge of live-animal experiments, Pacheco applied for a summer job at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Springs, Md., where work funded by the National Institute of Health was being carried out. Accepted as a volunteer, he found 17 monkeys in small wire cages in the unventilated, filthy lab where he was assigned. Twelve animals were disabled by severed nerves; five were control subjects. Pacheco went to the lab at night and took photos. He brought in scientists and veterinarians to see the monkeys; then he called the state police. The case of the Silver Springs monkeys resulted in the first reduction of federal funding for government-supported research because of animal abuse; it was the first laboratory animal case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Photos. $75,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit? As the joke goes, anywhere he wants--which, judging by animal-rights activist Guillermo's morally inflamed report, won't include labs like Maryland's Institute for Behavorial Research (IBR), the primate research center whose abuse of its monkeys kicked off the animal- rights movement in the US. In 1991, Guillermo relates, 22-year-old Alex Pacheco-- cofounder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)- -took a job at IBR as part of his undercover investigation into animal-research facilities. What he found at the lab--which was researching sensation and motor function in 17 intentionally maimed macaque monkeys--appalled him: ``The stench was unbelievable,'' writes Guillermo. ``Oozing untreated wounds covered the limbs and torsos...Filth encrusted the wire walls and floors of the cages....'' Pacheco proceeded to gather photographic and paper evidence that he finally presented to the state attorney's office and local county cops, who raided IBR and removed the monkeys. Days later, animal-cruelty charges--the first ever brought against an animal experimenter--were lodged against IBR's director, who eventually was found guilty on one count. That verdict, however, and indeed PETA's struggle with IBR, were subsumed in a larger battle as the National Institutes of Health, which funded IBR and viewed PETA as a threat to free scientific inquiry, threw its considerable weight against the animal-rights group. Guillermo, PETA's ``lifestyles director,'' makes no bones about her sympathies (``NIH was willing to sell out the animals in order to remain at the top of the animal experimentation heap''), but she does an orderly if plodding job of chronicling the PETA-NIH battle, which came to involve national media, Congressmen, and celebrities, and which goes on today. A one-sided, rather stiff telling of a tale that--as a paradigm of grass-roots activism--has needed to be told: Now, if only a Roger Caras or a Cleveland Amory would tell it again, with style. (Photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is considered the foremost animal rights proponent in the U.S., a reputation first won in the early 1980s when cofounders Alex Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk initiated an elaborately researched and documented legal challenge to the Institute of Behavioral Research, charging it with animal neglect and abuse. Monkey Business, written by the lifestyles director of PETA, is the unquestionably biased but compelling tale of the people and events that brought about this landmark case, projected it into the media, and, in doing so, filled a newly discovered void in the American conscience. Although this book is bound to anger, disgust, and move the reader, its effectiveness occasionally suffers from its overly emotional appeal. Recommended for all animal rights and ethics collections. Angus Trimnell