Members of the Primate Freedom Project and other volunteers protested the use of nonhuman primates in biomedical and harmful behavioral experimentation Saturday morning outside the Stone Gates of Emory.

The protesters argued that research methods that include the use of nonhuman primates do not contribute to medical progress and cause unnecessary harm.

Because Emory’s Yerkes Primate Research Center is the only national primate center in Georgia, the group organizes protests on campus, said Jean Barnes, director of the Primate Freedom Project, a nonprofit animal rights organization based in Atlanta.

“People need to know about the suffering, especially in light of the fact that it’s not doing any good,” Barnes said but added that the group does not hold regularly scheduled protests at Emory.

According to Primate Freedom Project’s website, the goals are three-fold: to educate people about the experience of nonhuman primates in laboratories, to advocate the end of nonhuman primate research and to support efforts aimed at terminating nonhuman primate experimentation.

Although Primate Freedom Project has legal rights to hold protests, University of California Los Angeles sued the Project last year to protect its researchers from the protesters whom they called “extremists.”

Saturday’s protest focused on efforts to free Wenka, a chimpanzee who has resided in Yerkes for 55 years. Wenka was taken from her mother at birth and placed in Yerkes for experimentation in 1954.

Phyllis Bedford, a volunteer at the event who has protested with members of the Primate Freedom Project for several years, said she believes Wenka, the oldest known chimpanzee in a United States lab, should be able to “live out her last days in peace and comfort.”

“Wenka is on my mind every day. Every time I walk somewhere, I think of her living in a cage. It blows my mind that she has been in a cage longer than I have been alive,” Bedford said.

In addition to holding protests, Barnes said the organization produces leaflets and advertises in campus newspapers to try to spread its message. She said all of the information the Primate Freedom Project publicizes about Yerkes is based on documents from the government and from Emory.

“We do pretty much anything and everything we can to educate people,” Barnes said.

— Contact Molly Davis.