The federal government has spent almost $100 million on monkey brain studies since 2007, including $16 million on tests in which scientists tried to scare the monkeys with rubber snakes and spiders — and lawmakers are demanding to know why.
"We have serious concerns about whether this questionable research deserves continued support from Congress and taxpayers," a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Reps. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., and Brian Mast, R-Fla., say in a letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health, which was obtained by NBC News.
Videos of the bizarre tests by the National Institute of Mental Health, some of which were performed on monkeys whose brains had been intentionally damaged beforehand, were obtained by the White Coat Waste Project after it filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in Washington, D.C., federal court.
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Some of the total of $95 million in government funding also went to other studies monitoring how the monkeys react to nature documentaries and how they can tell faces apart from fruit, records show. The scientists damaged various parts of the monkeys' brains to gauge what effect the damage had on their responses, the studies say. Some had parts of their brains removed surgically, while others had parts of their brains damaged with acid injections.
In the nature documentary experiments, which have cost
over $10 million since 2007, some of the rhesus monkeys also had "custom-designed fiberglass headposts" implanted on their skulls to immobilize their heads while scientists
tracked their eyes, the study says.
Congress has been urging the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH and the NIMH, to reduce testing on primates, and lawmakers say the videos have only heightened their sense of urgency.
"New reports about disturbing taxpayer-funded experiments on monkeys at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, demonstrate why more Congressional oversight of NIH primate research is urgently needed," Boyle and Mast say in a letter to NIH Director Francis Collins, which was also signed by Reps. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Dina Titus, D-Nev.
Roybal-Allard questioned the scientific need for the experiments and called for "more efficient and humane non-animal research alternatives."
"We've made progress, but these disturbing psychological tests on monkeys that have gone on for decades highlight the need for greater oversight of NIH efforts to reduce primate testing," Roybal-Allard said.
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