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Presently, LPAG is comprised of individuals representing more than 40 years of experience working with nonhuman primates. Current human members have worked in 18 laboratories, zoos, field sites and sanctuaries. We are joined by the countless nonhuman survivors of biomedical research labs who been given new lives in sanctuary. Current nonhuman members have given over 200 years to science.
Rachel Weiss and Jessica Ganas formed LPAG after becoming increasingly frustrated at the treatment and discrediting of laboratory workers speaking out on behalf of nonhuman primates by the research community. They also recognized the very real need for a support group for former and current lab workers.
We are very pleased to be joined in our efforts by honorary LPAG Members as well as an esteemed Board of Advisors.
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OFFICERS
Jessica Ganas, Vice-President, first worked at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. From there she went on to study free-ranging rhesus macaques off the coast of Puerto Rico for three years. Her next primate research job brought her to Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. It was during her time at Yerkes that the daily injustices and atrocities of primate lab research struck a deep note. The frustration of watching caring people unable to create change within the system, along with the horror of watching animals suffering convinced Jessica to leave Yerkes and primate biomedical research forever in order to devote her time and energy to promoting an end to research on primates. In October of 2000, she co-founded LPAG with former Yerkes caregiver Rachel Weiss. In the fall of 2001, Jessica left for Uganda to spend a year in the field studying mountain gorilla feeding ecology in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. In 2003, she received her master's degree in Environmental Studies from Antioch New England Graduate School. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in the Department of Primatology studying diet selectivity and habitat use patterns of Bwindi mountain gorillas.
Rachel Weiss, President and Secretary, began working for laboratory monkeys (squirrel monkeys and marmosets), rats, mice, rabbits and birds at Indiana University in 1993. After graduation from college, Rachel moved to Atlanta, Georgia to work at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. She looked forward to caring for nonhuman primates at a prestigious lab, making a contribution to science and medicine, and learning more about human relationships with our closest relatives. Shortly after beginning to care for hundreds of HIV/SIV infected macaques, Rachel began to understand the tremendous suffering required of these research subjects. She started working for chimpanzees in the summer of 1995, and became the lead care-tech in the Chimpanzee Infectious Disease building, home to Jerom Chimpanzee and twelve other HIV+ individuals. After promising Jerom that she'd work toward an end to biomedical research on chimpanzees, and a week after Jerom's death, Rachel quit Yerkes to spend much of the next year habituating wild chimpanzees in Uganda. Soon after her return to the States, Rachel secured a job caring for former pet, laboratory, and zoo monkeys and chimpanzees at the Primate Rescue Center, Inc., in Kentucky, where she was employed until June of 2000. She recently received her JD from the Northeastern University School of Law.
Jen Feuerstein, Director
Nancy Megna, Director
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HONORARY MEMBERS
The chimpanzees of the Fauna Foundation - Billy Jo, Binky, Chance, Donna Rae, Jeanie, Jethro, Pepper, Petra, Rachel, Regis, Sue Ellen, Tom, and Yoko - have over 200 years of laboratory experience at four facilities including the Primate Foundation of Arizona, Merck Pharmaceuticals, the Buckshire Corporation, and the defunct Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery In Primates (LEMSIP). The bodies of these stoic individuals were used in all manner of invasive biomedical research. Most lived in pairs or alone, in cages often no larger than 5'x5'x7' until their release to sanctuary in 1997. Their ordeals will no doubt forever haunt them, and although they will be forever captive, they now spend their days in relative peace and tranquility, with each other and their human friends. The endurance of these individuals gives us hope and is a constant reminder of the possibilities.
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BOARD OF ADVISORS
Richard Allan, DVM - co-founder Fauna Foundation, Quebec
Arnold Arluke - Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University, Boston
Marc Bekoff - Professor of Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder
Theodora Capaldo - President, New England Anti-Vivisection Society
Ann Chynoweth - Director, Animal Cruelty Response Team, HSUS
Roger Fouts - co-Director, Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute
John Gluck - Professor of Psychology, University of New Mexico
Jane Goodall - Jane Goodall Institute
Gloria Grow - co-founder Fauna Foundation
Alecia Lilly - Director, Ecosystem Health Program, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
F. Barbara Orlans - Kennedy Institue of Ethics
Viktor Reinhardt, DVM - Animal Welfare Institute
Tony Smith - Fauna Foundation
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