UC Berkeley Hosts PETA's Primate Expert

Dr. Debra Durham —who has more than 10 years of field and laboratory experience working with nonhuman primates—will discuss the trauma and distress experienced by tens of thousands of primates who, despite their bright minds and unique personalities, are relegated to small, barren cages:

Date: Tuesday, November 14
Time: 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Place: UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, Rm. 145

Durham earned her doctoral degree in animal behavior at the University of California at Davis, where she specialized in primates. After working in a research laboratory and witnessing nightmarish physical and psychological experiments on monkeys in captivity, she was prompted to study primates in the wild.

Durham will address oversight of laboratories and the Animal Welfare Act (AWA)—the only existing federal law that regulates the use of animals in laboratories—and the regulations specific to primates’ psychological well-being. To illustrate how laboratories frequently fail to satisfy even the basic minimum standards of the AWA, Durham will walk the audience through video footage that shows monkeys in a Virginia laboratory who are frantically circling around in their cages, pulling out their hair, and chewing their own flesh.

“Monkeys in laboratories may physically resemble their free-living cousins, but the behaviors that they display as a result of stress, fear, and social trauma are virtually unheard of in the wild,” says Durham.

The presentation is sponsored by the Boalt Hall Animal Law Society. The event is free and open to the general public.