Experiments on Primates

Nonhuman primates are subjected to a wide range of cruel and unnecessary experiments, including the following:

Pharmaceutical tests: In these experiments, thick gavage tubes are forced up the animals' nostrils and/or down their throats so that drugs can be pumped into their stomachs-even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that animal tests have an appalling 92 percent failure rate in predicting the safety and/or effectiveness of pharmaceuticals.
Vaccine tests: These studies subject rhesus monkeys to unbearable pain and suffering.
AIDS studies: In these experiments, laboratories expose rhesus monkeys to the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) despite the fact that primates have never been shown to contract AIDS. The monkeys, who are highly social beings, are often housed alone in isolation cages, where they slowly go insane from the lack of stimulation.
Xenotransplantation experiments: Baboons are the primates of choice in these Frankenstein-style tests that even animal experimenters concede would not take place if more people just signed their organ donor cards.
Military experiments: Primates are shot, burned, poisoned, irradiated, and tortured in other ways in these cruel studies.
Maternal-deprivation experiments: These unbelievably cruel studies began four decades ago when Harry Harlow infamously pulled baby primates from their mothers' care, giving them only rag dolls or noxious wire "mothers" as substitutes.
University experiments: Painful tests, which defy common sense and violate standards of decency, are conducted at some of the most prestigious Ivy League universities in the United States-in fact, a postdoctoral veterinary fellow at Columbia University blew the whistle on primate experiments in which the animals, given insufficient pain relief before, during, and after highly invasive procedures, suffered from neglect and inadequate veterinary care.