Testing was irrelevant

Regarding the U.S. FDA ending a nicotine study at an Arkansas lab after four monkeys died, it is ludicrous to still torture animals in this age to study nicotine effects. To all the writers defending the torture/experiments, notice I said nicotine.

Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay over $15 billion every year for experiments—on dogs, cats, monkeys, and other animals—that are irrelevant.

Renowned primate researcher Jane Goodall wrote to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb after the death of four adolescent monkeys in nicotine experiments, saying the treatment of the monkeys was tantamount to taxpayer-funded torture. “I was disturbed—and quite honestly shocked—to learn that the U.S. FDA is still, in 2017, performing cruel and unnecessary nicotine addiction experiments on monkeys,” she wrote. Devices were placed in young squirrel monkeys to deliver nicotine directly into their bloodstreams, then they were put in restraint devices and trained to press levers to receive doses of nicotine. Each monkey is locked alone in a cage for nearly three years. Goodall concluded: “To continue performing nicotine experiments on monkeys when the results of smoking are well-known in humans—whose smoking habits can still be studied directly—is shameful.”

KELLEY HARRIS

Pine Bluff