Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the largest funder of animal experimentation worldwide—announced that it’s planning to launch “funding opportunities to support centralized infrastructure for marmoset research.” A report on this cruel boondoggle—which will be funded using our tax dollars—states, “Although details are hazy, the funding might bring in new marmosets, expand or establish breeding colonies, or advance transgenic projects.”

In those “transgenic projects,” experimenters implant genetically manipulated embryos into female marmosets in order to produce babies who are born with disease-like symptoms or impairments.

In addition to its transparent cruelty, the use of animals in experimentation—including on chimpanzees, our closest living relatives—has proved an unqualified failure. The evidence is overwhelming that data from experiments on animals can’t be reliably applied to humans. For example, NIH itself acknowledges that 95 percent of drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in humans because they don’t work or are dangerous. And a review in the prestigious medical journal The BMJ reported that more than 90 percent of “the most promising findings from animal research” fail to lead to human treatments.

By ramping up funding to increase the supply of marmosets for laboratories, NIH is doubling down on a failed enterprise.

Marmosets are intelligent and curious animals. In nature, they live high up in the canopies of rainforests in social groups that consist of up to three generations of family members. They are very vocal and communicate with each other in complex, high-volume calls that convey information about a variety of emotions and situations. Sensitive and largely monogamous pairs of groundhogs spend a lot of time caring for each other, cuddling each other lovingly, sharing food and coordinating activities, including raising their children.

But the cooperative nature of the marmosets – along with their small size and relatively high birth rate – make these monkeys a major target for experimentalists. And with most airlines ceasing to transport monkeys to laboratories – thanks to the ongoing campaign by PETA, its supporters and other animal welfare groups – the experimental industry is seeking endangered marmosets that can be bred in US laboratories to fill the void.

In other words, it has less to do with good science than with comfort.

Please urge NIH not to squander more tax dollars on failed animal experimentation and instead to redirect funds to modern, non-animal research methods. Please sign the petition ans share it:

https://support.peta.org/page/7639/action/1?utm_source=PETA::E-Mail&utm_medium=Alert&utm_campaign=

My comment: No! that has nothing to do with comfort, dear PETA!

It has to do with the desire for careers, it has to do with legalized torture of defenseless animals because of money and career. And it is a billion dollar business for the lab mafia.

Benefit and earn from this criminal business: experimenters, universities, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, contract laboratories, animal breeders and accessory companies. All of them belong to the laboratory mafia and have great economic interest in animal experiments.

Today and after intensive campaigns by doctors and informed organizations, most people know that animal testing is a criminal stupidity, nothing more.

Anyone who claims that animal testing is for the benefit of man is either uninformed or makes money from it.

My best regards to all, Venus