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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Primate Research Centers program was created in the early 1960s, when most Americans still plugged their five-pound rotary dial telephones into a wall, and one of the most popular dance tunes was something called ‘Mashed Potato Time.’
The world has moved on.
But the failed National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs)—which promised vaccines and treatments for HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases—have not. These seven barbarous monkey prisons create heaps of primate corpses after inflicting physical and psychological torment on thousands of monkeys every year, replacing the dead with purpose-bred or imported monkeys for pointless experiments that continually fail to advance human health in a never-ending cycle of cruelty and death.
They’re also communicable disease incubators. PETA has shown that pathogens run rampant in U.S. laboratories housing monkeys, including the NPRCs. And they absorb federal funding like a dry sponge, siphoning tens of millions every year that could be used for superior, non-animal research methods that stand a far better chance of alleviating the suffering of human patients.
The foundation of the NPRCs’ scientific inquiry is built on quicksand. Monkeys are used as stand-ins for humans to study everything from Alzheimer’s disease to Zika virus infection. The experiments fail, spectacularly, for one simple reason: Monkeys are not miniature humans.
We can do better. And we have. Following intense pressure from PETA, NIH stopped funding invasive experiments on chimpanzees in 2013. In 2015, the New England National Primate Research Center was closed.
One down, seven to go.
NIH has already made significant progress toward ending experiments on animals. If the agency went further and ditched the NPRCs, tens of millions in funding could be funneled into far more promising, non-animal methods such as organs-on-chips, sophisticated computer modeling, 3-D human cell models, and non-invasive human imaging.
TAKE ACTION today by joining PETA’s call to NIH to shut down the remaining NPRCs.
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