Tell Congress to refuse a $30 million request to fund even more monkey experiments
Monkeys used in experiments spend their days in barren cages—except when they are being subjected to painful and terrifying procedures. These inquisitive and social animals are force-fed potentially toxic substances, infected with diseases, and immobilized in restraint chairs for hours on end.
The National Institutes of Health requested $10 million in taxpayer dollars in the federal budget for 2025 to support experiments on monkeys. Unfortunately, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved even more in designated funding $30 million—to expand the monkey experimentation industry in their version of the annual appropriations bill that contains funding for the NIH. The House version of this bill does not include this funding. We now need your help to make sure this funding is NOT included in the final bill anticipated to be voted on later this year.
Primates have historically been used with the hope of improving human health and safety, but animal testing not only causes immense suffering for animals in laboratories—it can also hinder advances in human healthcare because testing on animals often cannot give us answers to human conditions. In contrast, non-animal testing methods can more accurately predict how the human body will respond to drugs, treatments, and substances because they are based on human biology, cells, and tissues rather than animal biology.
Please join us in urging Congress to stop this proposed expansion of monkey experiments, which have limited value and cause suffering to tens of thousands of monkeys in U.S. laboratories every year.
Dear Legislator,
As your constituent, I am writing to urge you to reject the $30 million for the National Institutes of Health to expand non-human primate research infrastructure in the final FY25 Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill.
In addition to causing immense suffering, primate experiments have largely failed to translate to human health advances. Close to 90% of drugs tested on animals, including primates, ultimately fail in human trials. These experiments have wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Investing in non-animal methods could yield far better results for human health.
Non-animal methods can more accurately predict how the human body will respond to drugs and treatments because they are based on human biology, cells and tissues rather than animal biology. In one example, the largest organ-chip study conducted to date demonstrated that liver chips could detect toxicity in nearly seven out of every eight drugs that had proved toxic in human patients. Animal testing had previously indicated that these drugs were not toxic. Continued investment in these human-specific technologies will help us understand human diseases and conditions, and ultimately replace animal experiments—including primate experiments—in the future.
There is no reason to invest more funding in expensive and outdated experiments on nonhuman primates without a serious look at the outcomes of such a massive investment of taxpayer dollars, especially when hundreds of millions of dollars a year are already dedicated to primate research. Please act quickly to help ensure that the $30 million to increase primate experiments is NOT included in the final FY25 funding bill or any future appropriations bills.
