Congress Takes Historic Step Toward Phasing Out NIH’s Costly and Cruel Primate Experiments

Here is an interesting article which was written by Carlin Becker and published on this website : https://ijr.com/congress-step-reduce-replace-nith-taxpayer-funded-primate-experiments/

Congress Takes Historic Step Toward Phasing Out NIH’s Costly and Cruel Primate Experiments

For the first time in history, Congress is making moves to direct the federal government’s largest performer of primate experiments to reduce and replace the practice.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), housed under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), spends more tax dollars testing on primates than any government agency, but that may change after the House Appropriations Committee passed its complete Labor-HHS funding bill for 2020 on Wednesday.

The bill, which passed in the subcommittee last week, directs the agency to end all of its primate testing and to come up with a strategy and timeline for the reduction and replacement of primate experiments with alternative methods as well as a plan for their retirement to sanctuaries.

Federal documents obtained by taxpayer watchdog White Coat Waste Project reveal NIH averaged using about 7000 primates a year from 2014 to 2018. During that period, the agency  increased “maximum pain” experiments on the animals, in which no relief is given, by 300 percent.

Here are some of the experiments the agency has recently spent taxpayer money on :

• destroying areas of monkeys brains so that they can no longer recognize faces
• infecting monkeys with HIV-like viruses that cause massive weight loss, major organ failure, and death
• implanting electrodes into monkeys skulls, placing metal coils in their eyes, and locking them in restraint chairs to watch computer screens before killing them and dissecting their brains
• exposing monkeys to the Ebola virus, causing pain, fever, vomiting, bleeding, and death