UPDATE (1/26/18): The FDA announced it is permanently ending its nicotine addiction experiment and sending dozens of monkeys involved in the study to a sanctuary. Read more.

On the heels of WCW’s new lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for refusing to release videos and other documents detailing to the agency’s secretive taxpayer-funded nicotine addiction experiments on baby monkeys, world-renowned primatologist and humanitarian Dr. Jane Goodall has joined WCW’s campaign to expose and end this wasteful project.

As first reported by POLITICO, this morning, Dr. Goodall fired off a powerful letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb urging him to stop the experiments, which she described as “tantamount to torture.”

Read Dr. Goodall’s full letter below, and then urge the FDA to release the videos and shut down these torturous taxpayer-funded experiments.

September 7th, 2017

Dr. Scott Gottlieb
Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20993

Dear Dr. Gottlieb,

I was disturbed–and quite honestly shocked– to learn that in 2017 the U.S. FDA is still, in 2017, performing cruel and unnecessary nicotine addiction experiments on monkeys.

I have been told that FDA researchers implant squirrel monkeys as young as one-year-old with devices to deliver nicotine directly into their bloodstreams. The young primates are then placed in restraint devices and trained to press levers to receive doses of nicotine. This apparently enables them to determine at what point they become addicted.

Not only is it extremely cruel to restrain the monkeys, but the ill-effects of the nicotine, apparently recorded on video and documented, are said to include vomiting, diarrhea, and tremors. I was especially horrified to read that during the course of these experiments, each monkey is locked alone in a cage for nearly three years. For such social and intelligent animals this, together with the horrific experiments themselves, is tantamount to taxpayer-funded torture. I am told that the FDA has resisted releasing the videos of these cruel experiments and this I find extremely troubling.

To continue performing nicotine experiments on monkeys when the results of smoking are well-known in humans—whose smoking habits can still be studied directly—is shameful. I’m sure that most Americans would be horrified to learn their tax dollars are paying for this abuse.

I urge you to end this research and welcome the opportunity to discuss it with you further.

With Utmost Sincerity,

Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE
Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute &
UN Messenger of Peace