by Liz Sheld
The National Institute of Health (NIH) spent more than $29M over the last three years buying monkeys for animal experimentation to replace their current supply which was exhausted during their COVID vaccine research. The money will also go to prepare cages for the monkeys at the US National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs) which the NIH funds. The Biden Administration wants even more money dedicated to funding these animal experiments.
“To make room for more monkeys, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has invested about US$29 million over the past two years in refurbishing housing, building outdoor enclosures and making other infrastructure improvements at the US National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs), which it funds. The agency is expecting to spend another $7.5 million or so by October. And US President Joe Biden’s administration has proposed investing even more: citing the pandemic, it suggests a 27% increase in funding for the NPRCs in its budget request for fiscal year 2022. If approved by Congress, that would add $30 million for the centres.”
The agency claims they need the monkeys “to be ready” for the next pandemic.
“We have been making investments to bring the levels up and to plan for the future,” James Anderson, director of the NIH Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives in Bethesda, Maryland told Nature.com. “What happens if [a pandemic] happens again, with another virus in three years? We want to be ready for that.”
The FDA has skirted FOIA requests from taxpayer watchdog, White Coat Waste (WCW) and subsequently, the group filed a lawsuit to demand the agency disclose how they spend taxpayer dollars on their these primate experiments. “In January 2022, using FOIA, we requested information about all of FDA’s ongoing in-house experiments on hundreds of primates. They said they would give us documents by May 1…then ignored their own deadline. On May 31, they said they would get us the documents soon. But did they? Nope,” the organization said in a statement about the lawsuit.
WCW has revealed numerous macabre taxpayer-funded experiments by the federal government. The group’s investigators “exposed tests that involved drilling holes into monkeys’ skulls and injecting them with drugs, including the hallucinogenic street drug PCP, to damage their brains. The experimenters then forced the monkeys to watch or point to objects on a screen to measure the extent of the brain damage. Since the monkeys were not cooperative with the brutality, the experimenters would screw posts in their heads to forcibly immobilize them during experimental trials.” The group also discovered the Veteran’s Administration was severing the spines of docile vervet monkeys then forced them to undergo tests in exchange for food.
The new lawsuit will demand transparency from the agency. “Taxpayers have a right to know how our hard-earned money is being wasted by FDA white coats on cruel government primate labs, Desiree Bender, campaign manager at White Coat Waste Project said in a statement to Timcast.
Learn more about taxpayer-funded animal experiments at White Coat Waste.
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Liz Sheld is the senior news editor at American Greatness. She is a veteran political strategist and pollster who has worked on campaigns and public interest affairs. Liz has written at Breitbart and The Federalist, as well as at PJ Media, where she wrote “The Morning Briefing.” In her spare time, she shoots sporting clays and watches documentaries.
