Press Release: 7/29/2025

Ahead of Landmark Massachusetts Hearing, Casey Affleck Urges Lawmakers to Save Baby Monkeys

 

 

For Immediate Release:

July 28, 2025

Contact:

Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Boston – Casey Affleck sent a letter to legislators in his native Massachusetts today, urging Senator Lydia Edwards and Representative Michael S. Day to support a groundbreaking new bill that would prohibit animal experimenters from tearing baby monkeys away from their mothers ahead of its upcoming committee hearing on July 29. Prior to the hearing, PETA supporters will gather at 12 noon at the Massachusetts State House holding signs that read, “End Baby Monkey Abuse: Pass S.1167/H.1948,” to rally support for the landmark legislation. Massachusetts residents, PETA supporters, experts, and other animal allies will also testify in support of the bill at the hearing.

“As a parent myself, and someone who is close to my own mom, I find these experiments especially devastating,” Affleck writes. “As disgusted as I am to learn that this was happening at all, I am grateful that Massachusetts leadership is working to make sure this horrific practice never happens again in the state.”

The bill comes after PETA exposed Harvard Medical School experimenter Margaret Livingstone’s cruel tests, in which newborn monkeys were ripped from their mothers and forced to wear goggles that simulated disorienting strobe lights for the first 18 months of their lives. Livingstone had also sewn other monkeys’ eyes shut, and after years of torment, killed and dissected many of the animals. Following a nearly three-year PETA campaign, federal funding for Livingstone’s experiments was recently terminated, but without a law on the books banning the ghastly tests, they could happen again.

Livingstone spent 40 years and more than $33 million terrifying monkeys and other animals in agonizing experiments despite never producing a single treatment or cure for humans.

Figure 3 in Triggers for Mother Love | Margaret S. Livingstone | CC BY-NC-ND Svetlana, pictured above, was bred repeatedly to produce more monkeys for Livingstone to torture. Livingstone stole Svetlana’s babies from her and replaced them with stuffed toys.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

Affleck’s letter to Sen. Edwards and Rep. Day follows.

Dear Senator Edwards and Representative Day,

I am writing to urge you to lend your full support to the groundbreaking bill (H.1948, S.1167) recently introduced in the Massachusetts legislature to protect infant primates from the devastation of being taken away from their mothers for experimentation. As a parent myself and someone who is close to my own mom, I find these sorts of experiments especially devastating.

I recently learned from PETA that one laboratory in Massachusetts was removing infant rhesus macaques from their mothers at birth for the sole purpose of deliberately interfering with their visual development by sewing the baby monkeys’ eyelids shut or forcing them to live in strobe-like lighting conditions. Many of these young monkeys were then killed and dissected. As disgusted as I am to learn this was happening at all, I am grateful that Massachusetts leadership is working to make sure this horrific practice never happens again in the state.

I applaud you both and the other Massachusetts legislators working to protect infant monkeys in the state of Massachusetts. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Casey Affleck