Taxpayer-funded monkey experimenters don’t want you to know how much of your money they’re wasting to create drunk monkeys and abuse other primates in experiments, but White Coat Waste Project (WCW) isn’t letting them get away with it.

As first reported by the Washington Examiner, WCW has filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after uncovering cost disclosure violations by all seven National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs), the nation’s largest taxpayer-funded monkey labs imprisoning a combined 22,000 primates and receiving more than $100 million annually. WCW has also released troubling video of one of the noncompliant experiments.

WCW found that these facilities repeatedly violated federal law by failing to publicly disclose how much they spent on wasteful and cruel experiments including:

1. Turning monkeys into “binge-drinker” alcoholics (Oregon NPRC);
2. Surgically-inducing heart attacks in monkeys (Washington NPRC);
3. Exposing monkeys to biological weapons (Tulane NPRC);
4. Intentionally threatening monkeys to cause fear and anxiety (California NPRC);
5. Psychologically tormenting baboons (Southwest NPRC);
6. Drilling into monkeys’ skulls and injecting them with the ADHD-drug Ritalin (Wisconsin NPRC); and
7. Drilling to monkeys’ skulls and injected toxins to destroy their brains and cripple their limbs (Yerkes NPRC)

WCW determined that the grants associated with the noncompliant projects above received a combined $118 million in taxpayer funding during their most recent funding periods.

These are just the most recent violations documented by WCW of a long-standing federal law requiring that NIH grantees disclose the cost of their projects in all press releases. WCW first exposed widespread violations of this law in 2017, which prompted a damning federal audit and the introduction of federal legislation called the Cost Openness and Spending Transparency (COST) Act. The COST Act, introduced by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), would require all recipients of federal funds to publicly disclose the cost of their projects, and withhold funding for noncompliance.

Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent! If you haven’t already, urge your lawmakers to cosponsor the COST Act!