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New York Blood Center (NYBC) board member Dr. Laurie Glimcher instructed the faculty, staff and students of Weill Cornell Medical College, where she is the Dean, to ignore New Yorkers who gathered at the school’s main entrance to protest NYBC’s decision to abandon chimpanzees in Liberia. With the vast majority of people from Cornell refusing to engage with or acknowledge the protesters and with many people actually laughing at them, activists had little incentive to be polite or professional:

NYBC left 66 chimps on islands near Monrovia, the country’s capital, with no food or water after experimenting on them for 30 years; earning $500 million in royalties off of the research; and making a promise to provide them with lifelong care.

Weill Cornell student suggests that activists are misinformed. Is Dr. Jane Goodall misinformed too?

In addition to instructing students, faculty and staff to ignore the protesters, Cornell distributed handouts, which attempt to distance Dr. Glimcher from NYBC’s crime, as people exited the building directly into the protest.

Students, faculty and staff at Weill Cornell Medical College laugh at and ignore activists protesting the Dean, Dr. Laurie Glimcher, who is on the board of the NY Blood Center

Students, faculty and staff at Cornell expressed no compassion for the chimps abandoned by their Dean, Dr. Laurie Glimcher of the NY Blood Center

Please join the Facebook page: New York Blood Center: Do the Right Thing to participate in the online actions. If you live in New York City, please join the protests targeting New York Blood Center board members at their homes and offices.

Activists protest Dr. Laurie Glimcher of the New York Blood Center at her 16 room condo in NYC

Please join the Facebook page New York Blood Center: Do the Right Thing to join the campaign to compel Laurie Glimcher and the other NYBC board members to reinstate funding for the chimps.

Activists march from Laurie Glimcher’s office to her home in NYC

After ignoring inquiries from animal advocacy groups for weeks, the New York Blood Center (NYBC) admitted to the NY Times that it abandoned 66 former lab chimps in Liberia, leaving them to starve to death after using them in experiments for three decades: “We never had any obligation for care for the chimps, contractual or otherwise.” The NYBC’s stunning admission has sent shockwaves through great ape conservation and animal protection organizations worldwide.

NYBC has abandoned chimps who they used in experiments in Liberia from 1974 – 2006

In a public letter to the NYBC, Jane Goodall, the legendary chimpanzee researcher said it’s “completely shocking and unacceptable that NYBC would abandon these chimpanzees,” adding that it has a “moral obligation to continue to care for them for the remainder of their lives.”

Jane Goodall has expressed outrage at the NYBC’s decision to abandon their research chimps (photo: National Geographic)

Betsy Brotman, the head of NYBC’s chimpanzee research program from 1974 – 2006, suggested that her former employer’s effort to shift responsibility to the Liberian government is unethical and deceptive: “We brought those chimps to the Institute and encouraged them to breed. This had nothing to do with the Liberian government.”

Betsy Brotman ran the NY Blood Center’s chimp research facility in Liberia

Ms. Brotman, who says that NYBC has an obligation to pay for the care of the chimps, is outraged by the organization’s callousness: “This is awful. It’s unspeakably awful.” Primatologist Brian Hare agrees. In an interview with the NY times, Dr Hare, who has studied wild and captive great apes around the world, said he has “never seen anything even remotely as disgusting as this.”

Caretaker feeds New York Blood Center’s former lab chimps

Florida Attorney Wally Baldwin, a Board Member of Center for Great Apes, said “When the news broke that the NYBC was abandoning the chimps, I thought they’d say ‘there’s been a misunderstanding’ and reinstate the funding. I was stunned to discover that the news was true.”

Christopher Hillyer, CEO of NYBC who earns over $1.2 million/year, has left chimps to starve

The NYBC has attributed its decision to cut funding for the chimps to difficult economic times for blood banks. Michael Budkie, the Director of Stop Animal Exploitation Now (SAEN) says that’s a poor excuse: “The NYBC has $400 million in assets; earns $320 million in annual income; and pays its President, Christopher Hillyer, over $1.2 million a year. Do they really expect us to believe that they don’t have the money to provide food and water for these animals?”

Please join the Facebook page New York Blood Center: Do the Right Thing and participate in the calls to action.

Call Christopher Hillyer, the President & CEO of the NY Blood Center, and demand that his organization fulfills its obligation and promise to provide lifelong care to the chimpanzees used in their medical experiments: (212) 570-3000.

On the topic of our planet’s future, Jane Goodall, the legendary chimpanzee researcher, does not mince words: “How is it possible that the most intellectual creature that has ever walked on planet earth is destroying its only home?” Dr. Goodall, who is 81, spends 300 days year traveling the world in an effort to save it. The biggest problem, she says, is climate change. And the biggest culprit? Animal agriculture.

In a lecture to hundreds of fans in NYC on April 15th, Dr. Goodall explained that agribusinesses are clearing rainforests in the Amazon to graze cattle and grow crops to feed them. Without rainforests – the “lungs of the earth” – the planet’s ability to convert carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, into oxygen is compromised.

Clearing Amazon rainforest for cattle grazing (photo: Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

Even more harmful than CO2, Goodall said, is the methane gas emitted in cow farts. As developing countries adopt Western diets heavy in animal protein, more methane and CO2 are released into the atmosphere, further warming the planet and jeopardizing our ability to inhabit it.

Jane Goodall uses a stuffed cow to point out that methane gas is emitted in cow farts. (photo: WildCare)

During her talk, Dr. Goodall described some of the other destructive effects of animal agriculture, including land and water pollution, antibiotic resistance, depletion of fresh water resources and animal cruelty, which is was motivated her to go veg. In a recent interview with the Toronto Globe & Mail, she said, “I became a vegetarian because of the horrendous suffering on factory farms and in abattoirs.”

Jane Goodall paints a grim picture of the state of the planet, but she is hopeful that humans will work together to save ourselves from ourselves. And she offers some advice that each of us can put into action today:

• Go vegetarian.
• Consume less. The more we buy, she argues, the more natural resources we extract from the planet. How much stuff do we really need?
• Improve the environment in our own communities. Goodall’s Roots & Shoots program, which has chapters in 130 countries, is helping people plant trees, clean rivers and perform other community services in their own backyards.

Roots & Shoots has chapters in 130 countries

At the end of her presentation, Dr. Goodall showed a video of a newly-released captive chimpanzee hugging her when she emerged from her crate and realized she was home in the jungle. Goodall uses this remarkable event to point out that, as intelligent as chimps are, their brains are far less powerful than those of humans. And she left the audience with a challenge — to harness the brainpower that we’ve used to damage the planet to save it.