Nerve-Agent Attack Training Exercise at Aberdeen Proving Ground Will Use Modern Human Simulators Instead
For
Immediate Release
October
13, 2011
Contact:
Robbyn
Brooks 202-483-7382
Washington -- Following months of vigorous campaigning by PETA, the U.S. Army has confirmed that it will discontinue cruel monkey laboratories that were part of Aberdeen Proving Ground's chemical casualty training courses. For years, dozens of vervet monkeys were routinely injected with drug overdoses that caused them to convulse violently in order to crudely recreate the effects of a nerve agent. Aberdeen will now use sophisticated simulators for this course, which have been endorsed by civilian and military medical experts as superior training methods. Aberdeen was the only military facility still using animals for this training.
"We are delighted and relieved that the U.S. Army has done an about-face and decided to use only modern, human-like simulators at all of its bases," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "This is an enormous victory for the animals who will no longer spend their lives in cages and be intentionally poisoned—and for our troops, who deserve the best training available."
PETA's high-profile national campaign to end the abuse of monkeys in the Army course included support from veterans, physicians, and celebrities—such as The Messenger star Woody Harrelson, who sent a letter to the Army's chief of staff in support of the effort. PETA and its members protested near Aberdeen, at the Army's largest national expo, and at Army recruitment centers across the country.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.