exposure by forcing the animals to perform on treadmills, then irradiating them and putting them back on the treadmills. The animals were collapsing on the machines and vomiting. One company had a contract with an American business to export 70,000 monkeys to the United States. The Bangladesh government expelled that company. Newsletter and membership IPPL obtains support through annual memberships, sponsorship of rescued gibbons living at the Summerville IPPL gibbon sanctuary, and partnerships with other animal rights and not-for-profit organizations. The organization publishes a newsletter, IPPL News, which it sends to donors. As of 2019, the organization has a membership of over 15,000 worldwide. History 1970s 1973: Founding. 1974: The first issue of IPPL News was published. IPPL exposed a network of smugglers that was shipping gibbons from Thailand to the United States and got it closed down. 1975: In Project Bangkok Airport, fifty Thai students worked at the airport documenting the conditions under which wildlife was being exported. The result was a ban on export of all primates from Thailand. 1976: IPPL uncovered "The Singapore Connection", a network through which legally protected primates were smuggled from Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia via Singapore and on to the West with Singaporean export documents. IPPL's campaign resulted in shutting down this illegal trade. 1977: IPPL exposed the fate of rhesus monkeys exported from India to the United States for use in radiation experiments. IPPL's protests to the Indian press and authorities led India to ban all primate exports. 1978: After the death of a chimpanzee at the hands of surgeon Christian Barnard during the development of heart transplantation, IPPL organized a worldwide protest. A second chimp slated for a heart transplantation experiment was removed and sent to a zoo. 1979: IPPL exposed the use of monkeys from Bangladesh in U.S. military radiation experiments. Bangladesh canceled plans to export more than 70,000 monkeys. 1980s 1980: IPPL took legal action that resulted in the closing of a U.S. government laboratory in California that was using baby gibbons. Many of the animals had been smuggled into the country from Thailand. 1982: IPPL publicized the U.S. military's biological warfare experiments on primates and started a campaign to persuade countries that were supplying monkeys to U.S. labs (including Malaysia and Indonesia) to ban primate exports. 1983: IPPL's Belgian representative, Roland Corluy, infiltrated the operations of the Belgian smuggler George Munro and found a cache of endangered primates,