Primate Experimentation

From the jungle or savannah to the laboratory, every moment of the captured primate's experience is characterized by sickness, despair, fear, loneliness, and terror. Many primates die during quarantine and transport into the United States, with the mortality rate reaching a high of 20 percent at one point, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those who survive the miserable journeys from their homes are funneled into gruesome, painful, repetitive, and often pointless experiments from which few emerge alive.

Every year in the United States, more than 50,000 nonhuman primates are used in experiments that are often painful and frequently lethal. While it is well known that nonhuman primates are very similar to humans in their emotional traits and social organization, these animals are still subjected to abuse in laboratories, where they are used as "research tools" and treated as inanimate objects. They are used in studies of baldness, erectile dysfunction, drug addiction, and menstruation, and while many of these experiments are federally funded, taxpayers are denied access to the high-security floors and dark, underground laboratories where the studies are conducted.