It’s truly scary how agencies from Veterans Affairs to the Environmental Protection Agency have been wasting your tax dollars to buy animal experimentation devices that wouldn’t be out of place in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.
Just in time for Halloween, check out the list we’ve compiled using government data and open records to see what animal torture tools government laboratories have been purchasing with your money.
1. Small Animal Skull-Drilling Systems (Actual device)
Purchaser: US Army
Cost to Taxpayers: $30,574
Just like Frankenstein’s poor monster strapped down to the table, stereotaxic systems are used to hold animals in place while they have their heads cut open and their skulls drilled into. We think the US Army can find better places to spend that $30,000.
2. Mouse Tattooing System (Actual device)
Purchaser: Environmental Protection Agency
Cost to Taxpayers: $4,995
Mice are locked into this system to be tattooed for identification in experiments. Yikes! Maybe the EPA should be focusing less on tattooing mice and more on preventing toxic waste from spilling into America’s rivers?
3. “Monkey Isolation Chamber” (Actual device)
Purchaser: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Cost to Taxpayers: $14,850
These tiny, dark isolation chambers are boxes where monkeys locked in restraint chairs are confined during addiction experiments at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. With piles of purchases like these, it’s not hard to imagine how the NIH racks up a $12 billion tab for wasteful animal experiments each year.
4. “Video Fear Conditioning System” For Mice (Actual device)
Purchaser: Veterans Affairs
Cost to Taxpayers: $58,702
Considering how many problems the VA has been having providing services to veterans, maybe they should have spent this $58,000 on something other than a box to shock mice and blast them with loud noises and videotape the results. Or if they really wanted to terrify mice, maybe they could have them treated at one of their clinics.
5. Monkey and Rat Testing Chambers
Purchaser: Food and Drug Administration
Cost to Taxpayers: $273,083
The last torture device purchase on our list is the most expensive. Better known as Skinner boxes, operant chambers are used to restrain and often shock monkeys and rats to force their participation in experiments at FDA laboratories. Maybe agency chiefs need to undergo psychological studies so we can understand why they spent a quarter million dollars on these devices when FDA reports 9 out of 10 drugs fail in human trials because animal tests don’t accurately predict their safety and effectiveness?
What you can do
Help the White Coat Waste Project spread the word about this nightmarish and wasteful government spending by using the links below to share this list on Twitter and Facebook.