VIDEO: Heads Turn in Oakland as Activists Protest New York Blood Center’s Owen Garrick
The News
As hundreds of workers entered and exited their office building in downtown Oakland on March 18th, one thing became clear to the activists who were outside protesting their neighbor from Suite 013: Most of them already knew that Owen Garrick abandoned chimpanzees in Liberia from news coverage and prior protests, and most were grateful that people were speaking out on behalf of the chimps.
“Owen Garrick must be using a back entrance and taking the stairs in order to avoid facing people in his building,” said protest organizer and primatologist Bob Ingersoll. “After three protests, his neighbors have told us they know who he is and about the moral crime he committed.”
Activists are protesting Owen Garrick and his colleagues on the board of the New York Blood Center because they all bear responsibility for the organization’s decision to abandon their former lab chimpanzees on desert islands with no food or water after promising to provide them with lifelong care. For a thirty year period starting in the mid-1970s, NYBC conducted invasive research experiments on over 400 hundred chimpanzees in Liberia, where they could capture chimps in the wild, breed them in captivity and experiment on them with little regulatory oversight.
In May, 2015, the NY Times reported that the blood center walked away from its $25,000 monthly obligation, leaving the chimps to die of starvation and thirst while arguing that animal welfare groups should pay for the long-term care of the chimps. To date, NYBC has earned an estimated $500 million in royalties off of the research conducted on the chimps.
Your Turn
Please join the Facebook page: New York Blood Center: Do the Right Thing to stay apprised of news and to participate in online actions to pressure NYBC board members to fulfill their promise to provide lifelong care to their laboratory chimps.
Filed under: Experimentation
Tagged with: chimpanzees, Jane Goodall, New York Blood Center, Owen Garrick
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