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.
A White Coat Waste campaign has succeeded in getting the VA to end its cruel experiments on primates and cats.https://t.co/Yx6G7XWPok
— One Green Planet (@OneGreenPlanet) November 10, 2021
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).
The VA has used our taxpayer dollars to fund deadly and unnecessary experiments on dogs at facilities all across the United States. This is inhumane and needs to stop immediately. pic.twitter.com/UnClfu8Juf
— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) June 11, 2021
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.
Taxpayer money should have never gone into cruel cat and monkey experiments in the first place. This is good news for animal lovers across our country.https://t.co/BFvwc9mJ5E
— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) November 16, 2021
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.
