White Coat
Waste Project
December 2018
The FDA ended nicotine-addiction studies on baby monkeys and just now retired them to a sanctuary — where they belong!
FDA has never retired primates before after government experimentation!
In fact, most puppies, kittens and primates in government labs are
slaughtered and incinerated like trash.
Thank you for your support that made this happen. GO HERE to Defund Primate Tests.
From Jacqueline Howard, CNN.com, December 4, 2018:
Squirrel monkey chirps filled a small ranch-style building in north
Gainesville, Florida -- a chorus that made Kari Bagnall's smile swell even
wider.
She covered her grin with a medical mask, calmly walked to the middle of a
climate-controlled room and greeted each of the 26 monkeys. There were about
three to each large cage. Poppit and Pixel jumped over each other when Kari
passed by. Gizmo looked up with wide eyes. Pip let out a tiny chirp.
Then there was Oak. Despite pain from rheumatoid arthritis, his energy was
about as high as the others'. Bagnall stopped interacting with the other
monkeys to look directly at him. She squinted, homed in on his hands and
then shifted her shoulders back with satisfaction. "He looks good," she
said.
Oak and the other monkeys arrived in mid-November at Jungle Friends, this
primate sanctuary in Gainesville where Bagnall serves as founder and
director.
The monkeys were once involved in a US Food and Drug Administration study
intended to investigate the role of various levels of nicotine in the onset
of addiction in teens and young adults.
In January, after the deaths of four monkeys involved in the research drew
criticism from some animal rights activists, the agency ended the study. The
26 remaining monkeys were retired to Jungle Friends, and the FDA quickly
established an Animal Welfare Council to oversee all animal research under
the agency's purview.
Jungle Friends, founded in 1996, is home to more than 300 new world monkeys
and has been asked to take in hundreds of monkeys from research laboratories
over the years. The squirrel monkeys are the latest arrivals.
The common squirrel monkey, or Saimiri sciureus, typically can be found in
the tropical forests of Central and South America, roaming from Costa Rica
through central Brazil and Bolivia. These monkeys typically have a life span
of about 20 years. The males weigh between 1.22 and 2.53 pounds on average,
and the females average between 1.43 and 2.76 pounds.
When the monkeys arrived, Bagnall said, they all looked "gorgeous" and
healthy, needing no serious medical care -- except for Oak, who the FDA had
told the sanctuary had a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis and was receiving
treatment.
Bagnall thanked the FDA for releasing the monkeys to her sanctuary's care.
"The most special thing about these particular monkeys is that they came out
of the FDA, which has not released monkeys out of research in the past --
and we are so happy that now the FDA is opting to retire monkeys after the
research has ended. They didn't have to do this," Bagnall said.