FDA shuts down nicotine study as inhumane after 4 monkeys died

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The Food and Drug Administration has shut down a nicotine experiment after four out of 30 monkeys died from what officials have labeled animal cruelty. The squirrel monkeys will be removed from the Arkansas’ National Center for Toxicological Research to an animal sanctuary.

According to the Washington Post, the study launched in 2014 was aimed to provide a better understanding of nicotine addiction. Using adolescent and adult monkeys, the animals self-administered nicotine by pulling a lever. Once they were addicted, scientists were able to decrease the nicotine and observe the effects.

By 2017, four of the monkeys had died; three of the monkeys dying from anesthesia complications and a fourth monkey dying from an unknown cause of bloat. Three of the primates succumbed to anesthesia complications when catheters were inserted, and the fourth “related to bloat, the cause of which is often unclear.”

The experiment was brought to the public’s attention last March, after a Freedom of Information Act request was filed for the study’s records by the White Coat Waste Project, a group which opposes taxpayer-funded animal experimentation. They obtained 64 pages of documents prompting Jane Goodall to write  an open letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. In the letter Goodall  called the experiments on the monkeys  “shameful, cruel and unnecessary”, describing how the animals were restrained and callously observed after having been subjected to the side-effects of nicotine by vomiting and diarrhea.

Based on the report from Goodall, veterinarians and scientists, in September the study was suspended.  Experts visited the laboratory to check on the welfare of the animals and review documents. Officials reported a lack of adequate oversight and “repeated” deficiencies in the welfare and treatment of the monkeys.

On Friday, Gottlieb ended the study and stated the FDA is working to accelerate the adoption of new methods of scientific technology to reduce the needs of animal testing. Anthony Bellotti, White Coat Waste Project’s president will continue to push for more transparency using animals funded by taxpayers in such “wasteful spending.”

Read more about the animal abuse of monkeys in laboratory testing here.

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Continue reading: Veterinarian accused of animal cruelty loses his license


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8 COMMENTS

  1. Our government hasn’t learned yet how dangerous nicotine is to our bodies after all these years and countless previous testing on monkeys and other animals? What a waste of taxpayers money for funding to such useless testing and to have these poor animals suffer because of these testing programs.

  2. It’s abour time to admitting it’s animal abuse! Close down all the beauty and food researchers that abuse thousand of animals just for our greed.

  3. All of us who can think already know nicotine is harmful, addicting and should be destroyed. But they continuously innocent animals to study what we, the general public already know.
    Perhaps if they asked us then we could save the tax payer a lot of money and save lives and stop the cruelty. This makes me sick

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