Dozens of Protesters Call on Harvard President Bacow to Shut Down HMS Lab Conducting Primate Experiments

More than three dozen animal rights activists demanded University President Lawrence S. Bacow shut down a lab at Harvard Medical School that conducted nonhuman primate experiments during a Tuesday afternoon protest outside Harvard Yard.

The protesters, many of whom were affiliated with the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals group, took aim at experiments conducted on monkeys by HMS professor Margaret S. Livingstone. In pamphlets distributed at the protest, PETA affiliates and supporters alleged Livingstone tortured baby macaques by stealing them from their mothers and sewing their eyes shut.

Amanda B. Brody, a senior campaigner for PETA who attended the protest on Tuesday, said Livingstone’s experiments on monkeys are “putting a stain on the University.”

“Harvard should honestly be embarrassed that this is happening at their university,” Brody said. “It needs to be shut down immediately.”

The protest, which took place outside Johnston Gate, is the latest development in a monthslong campaign against Livingstone’s research.

In October 2022, PETA began circulating a petition requesting that Bacow and HMS Dean George Q. Daley ’82 shut down Livingstone’s lab, the same demand echoed by protesters on Tuesday. The petition has now amassed more than 88,500 signatures.

Livingstone and HMS issued separate statements in October disputing PETA’s description of Livingstone’s research.

“The content presented on the PETA website is misleading and contains factual inaccuracies,” HMS wrote in a Oct. 14 statement. “The video, certain photos, and some of the behaviors described on the website are not from Dr. Margaret Livingstone’s lab, and descriptions related to her methods contain inaccuracies and exaggerations.”

Livingstone wrote in a Oct. 24 statement published on the HMS website that the tactics used by animal rights activists to criticize her research “have miscast my work, twisted facts, and spread inaccurate and false information wrapped in emotionally charged, inflammatory language.”

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on Tuesday regarding demands for Bacow to shut down Livingstone’s lab. Livingstone did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday and a spokesperson for HMS pointed to October 2022 statements by the Medical School and Livingstone.

More than 380 researchers, including famed primatologist Jane Goodall, signed a letter last month calling on the National Institutes of Health to stop funding nonhuman primate experimentation.

HMS defended the use of animals for research purposes in its October 2022 statement.

“The humane and regulated use of animal models in biomedical research remains indispensable for understanding the biological processes that give rise to disease, for designing new therapies and interventions to improve health, and for ensuring such treatments are safe and effective,” the Medical School wrote. “The treatment and eventual eradication of many diseases will be enabled by knowledge generated from research in animal models.”

John K. Tyson, an animal rights activist, said he attended the protest because of the similarities between humans and macaque monkeys.

“Ninety-eight percent of our DNA is the same. They’re us, they’re our family,” Tyson said. “We’ve just been trained that — like some of the other ways we’ve been trained to think — that some lives matter more than others.”

“Gandhi said he thought the life of a lamb was as sacred as the life of a human,” Tyson added. “I think he was right.”

—Staff writer Miles J. Herszenhorn can be reached at miles.herszenhorn@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MHerszenhorn.