space monkey: no, no, no

PETA appalled by photos of Iranian space monkey
Ynetnews, Jan 29 2013

No fun – RB

Animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) issued a statement following photos released by Iran depicting a monkey the Islamic Republic has sent into space, saying they were appalled. Tehran on Monday boasted the successful launch of a live monkey into space, inside a research pod. Iran said it had launched the pod, named Pishtam (Pioneer) to an altitude of 120 km and that both the pod and the monkey were recovered safely after the landing. The PETA statement said:

We are appalled by photos of a visibly terrified monkey crudely strapped into a restraint device in which he was allegedly launched into space by the Iranian Space Agency. Monkeys are highly intelligent and sensitive animals who not only are traumatized by the violence and noise of a launch and landing but also suffer when caged in a laboratory before and, if they survive, after a flight. Iran is repeating the wasteful and cruel mistakes that marked the darkest days of the space race. NASA ended the use of primates in space radiation experiments in the early 1990s, when it determined that the results were not relevant to human astronauts. In 2010, NASA’s plans to restart the program were canceled after PETA and others voiced strong ethical and scientific objections to the ill-advised plan. The European Space Agency has publicly stated that it declines any interest in monkey research and does not consider any need or use for such results. The ESA instead employs modern technology such as the state-of-the-art simulators to assess health risks for astronauts. We urged Dr Hamid Fazeli, head of the Iranian Space Agency, to ground the misguided mission back in 2011, citing that primates are no longer sent into space by the US or European space agencies.