By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

We’re pushing back hard against plans to fund expanded reliance on monkeys in experiments in the U.S., plans that would see even more of these intelligent, curious animals used in outdated and unreliable tests, often at taxpayer expense.

Instead, we’ve advocated for broader investments in technologically-advanced methods that don’t use live animals and can tell us more about how the human body works—instead of attempting to translate the results of animal experiments to humans.

NIH abandons appeal of federal judge’s ruling that agency’s refusal to retire former research chimps to sanctuary was illegal

NIH abandons appeal of federal judge’s ruling that agency’s refusal to retire former research chimps to sanctuary was illegal

NIH abandons appeal of federal judge’s ruling that agency’s refusal to retire former research chimps to sanctuary was illegal

WASHINGTON (March 22, 2024)—Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed the National Institutes of Health’s appeal of a federal court ruling that the agency broke the law by withholding sanctuary retirement from federally owned chimpanzees formerly used in research. The appeal was dismissed at NIH’s request.

By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

Update March 21, 2024: The second package of federal funding bills was released today, and we were pleased to see that there is NO funding to expand primate testing infrastructure at the National Institutes of Health in this final bill! We thank everyone who reached out to their elected federal officials about this important issue.

By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

A company called “Safer Human Medicine” is proposing to build a monkey breeding warehouse in the small town of Bainbridge, Georgia. At full capacity, the proposed facility, at a significant cost to taxpayers, would be the largest in the U.S., holding up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques bred for experiments. Such a move would not make medicine safer and would only take science and progress for animals backward.

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