NIMH Is Hiring Another Monkey Torturer: PETA Reveals What Applicants Can Expect

It’s an age-old question: What do you want to be when you grow up? An astronaut? Sure. A rock star? Maybe. A monkey tormentor? Not so much.

Few people grow up with ambitions to become a monkey’s worst nightmare, inflicting misery on them day after day in cruel and pointless experiments. Yet the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) wants to hire a “scientist” for its Laboratory of Neuropsychology—home of infamous monkey enemy Elisabeth Murray—to do exactly that.

Modified from Figure 1 in “Refined methodology for implantation of a head fixation device and chronic recording chambers in non-human primates” | F. Lanz et al. | CC BY 3.0

 

The chosen applicant will wind up with blood on their hands—both metaphorically and literally. They’ll perform the dirty work of Murray and her fellow animal tormentors, performing “surgical services” that include bolting metal rods into monkeys’ skulls, sucking out portions of their brains, and injecting them with viruses.

Those with pure hearts and weak stomachs need not apply. But those with no medical training and a sadistic streak are still in the running.

Hiring for a Hack Job

Performing an operation without any formal medical training would be grounds for a lawsuit if it were done on a human. But at NIMH—supposedly the world’s premier mental health research organization—carving into monkeys’ skulls requires no formal medical or veterinary training at all.

In fact, NIMH says it’ll be willing to hand over the bone saw to someone with just a bachelor’s degree—as long as they’ve already cut open enough monkeys.

This laid-back approach to life-altering medical procedures should come as no surprise from an institution overseen by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has racked up more than 160 violations of animal welfare guidelines in its laboratories since 2018. But to any prospective applicant who cares one iota about animals, it should be a blazing red flag.

Joining the Scream Team

They say coworkers can make or break a job, and at NIMH, the new hire can expect to work alongside colleagues at the cutting edge of monkey torture—including Murray herself, who’s an expert in the following:

• Terrorizing monkeys trapped in a metal box with fake snakes and spiders
• Blowing puffs of air directly into monkeys’ eyes
• Strapping them into restraint chairs so they can’t move their heads, arms, and/or legs for hours on end
• Depriving them of food or water to compel their cooperation in testing
• Holding them in solitary confinement for more than a decade

The blood-red cherry on top of this killer gig? All the monkeys the chosen applicant meets in Murray’s laboratory will be killed.

Killing Animals Is a Dead-End Job

Murray has been at her vile experiments for more than 40 years, and in all that time—and despite $50 million in taxpayer funding—they haven’t produced a single cure or treatment for humans.

If NIMH wants to attract a respectable scientist, it should invest its resources in modern research methods that can yield meaningful results for humans without harming animals. Such cutting-edge research models are outlined in PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Deal. (Hey, scientists! We have job openings, too—for jobs that can actually save lives.)

Give Betsy and Co. the Boot

It’s time for NIMH to let go of its incompetent reliance on ineffective animal experiments. Please TAKE ACTION and urge NIH, which oversees NIMH, to shut down Murray’s cruel monkey torture chamber:

Then add your name to our petition to NIMH’s advisory council urging it to redirect funds away from archaic experiments on animals and toward modern, human-relevant methods: