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History Of PETA: People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals

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PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was founded as a non-profit organization in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco (PETA np). They first gained attention during the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab conducted by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia (a nerve cell cluster) that supplied nerves to the monkeys' fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column (Carlson np). He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by starving them (Carlson np). The idea behind this experiment was to see if monkeys could be induced to use limbs they could not feel. …show more content…

Ingrid Newkirk was also involved by laying crouched in the back seat of a car outside, hidden under a large cardboard box with holes for her eyes, using a walkie-talkie from a toy store to alert Pacheco if anyone else entered the building (Carlson np). The monkeys' living conditions documented by Pacheco were graphically disturbing. Having collected the evidence, Newkirk and Pacheco alerted the police, who raided the lab, removed the monkeys, and charged Taub with 113 counts of cruelty to animals and six counts of failing to provide adequate veterinary care (Carlson np). Although Taub’s convictions were later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized. Nevertheless, an organization named PETA was

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