TOTAL VICTORY: WCW Ends the VA’s $9M Monkey Crippling Experiments in West Haven

Posted by Amanda Nieves
15 October 2021 | Blog


For years, White Coat Waste Project has been working to defund wasteful taxpayer-funded experiments on animals at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.

This week, we’ve won another decisive victory in the War on Waste: we’ve shut down a multimillion-dollar boondoggle at the West Haven VA, where government white coats severed the spines of “calm [and] easy to handle” vervet monkeys, then forced them to perform dexterity tests in exchange for food.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, our investigators discovered these disturbing tests also involved injecting chemicals into monkeys’ brains and spines, then cutting their skulls open for analysis.

The VA was slow to turn over data. (They must not have wanted us to expose their monkey business). But we persisted — and what our investigators found was shocking:

  • The VA’s experiments on these monkeys left them partially paralyzed, and at risk of pressure sores, weight loss and self-injury.
  • The experiments caused “more severe neurologic deficits then [sic] expected in the protocol,” so the VA had to kill one monkey prior to the end of the experiment.
  • VA white coats decided that a monkey was “unusually slow to recover” and “took a turn for the worse” after having her spine severed. She was also killed prematurely.
  • Another monkey was killed prematurely after having an adverse reaction to test devices, which had been implanted in his brain.

Your tax bill for this was 9 million dollars.

But now, thanks to our efforts, that number has been reduced to…zero.

It all comes back to our motto: F.E.D.
Find the waste.
Expose the waste.
Defund the waste.

Because when the money stops, the killing stops.

Thanks to our millions of advocates nationwide, lawmakers have taken action: in December 2019, Congress enacted WCW-backed legislation directing the VA to phase out testing on cats, dogs and monkeys by 2025 (see section 249 on page 665).

Even though that was a massive, monumental step forward, we kept fighting against wasteful spending. We didn’t want to wait until 2025. We kept our full-court press going strong, and in August, we got the VA to end its wasteful and cruel $7million angel dust experiments on monkeys at the Minneapolis VA.

This week marks three wins in a row for WCW — since 2015, we’re the only organization to shut down any government primate labs in the United States.

We shut down the FDA’s $5.5 million nicotine addiction tests on baby monkeys in Arkansas.

We shut down the VA’s $7 million angel dust tests on monkeys in Minnesota.

Now, we’ve shut down the VA’s $9 million monkey crippling experiments in Connecticut.

Despite this massive win, we’re not going to stop. In fact, this just makes us want to fight even harder, and push the VA to end its monkey business in San Diego.

Two down, one to go.

Help us build on this momentum, and sign our petition telling the VA and other government labs to end all of their taxpayer-funded primate experiments!

 

 

Blog Comments

Stop animal testing. It’s uncivilized.

Please save God’s creatures God Bless

ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING humans

No go Stopp 🛑 zu allen Tierversuchen

Please do not stop going after these horrible labs! Thank you for being a hero and guardian angels for many sweet souls who do not deserve these evil places! My heart and prayers goes out to all the animals ! Thank you Carol. Carol3@ptd.net

Thank you all for what you do for animals. Experiments on animals have NO place in this world, they are innocent and dont deserve this disgusting inhumane treatment.

Thank you for stopping these horrific experiments on these innocent animals.I pray for an end to this cruelty.Thank you.

So grateful for your commitment to end these horrific experimentations. Poor little monkeys never deserved such hell.

E’ orribile quello che devono subire queste povere creature condannate senza colpe

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