It’s little known that the U.S.’s seven National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs) sprang from a “Cold War” mentality — that they were modeled after a Russian primate facility and founded on the paranoid belief that if the Soviets were breeding and experimenting on monkeys, the U.S. better do it, too . . . and bigger.
And, so the U.S. did.
Now, some 60 years later, the NPRCs remain entrenched in that same warped worldview: still propped up by billions in public funding, still clinging to the myth of scientific supremacy, and still promoting the false and detrimental idea of “us versus them”.
Only now, “them” doesn’t mean rival nations. It means other animals.
The NPRCs exist to exploit nonhuman primates — to breed, incarcerate, torment, and deliver monkeys into the cages of those who will do the same. Their goal, in their own words, is to “facilitate the effective use” of nonhuman primates by biomedical researchers. And, they proudly declare their partnership with the NIH to “conduct and enable” animal research.
Translation: they exist to commodify life, mass-produce victims, normalize violence, and make suffering scalable.
And, they’re succeeding.
Between 2014 and 2024, the NPRCs reported an average annual breeding and use of over 26,000 nonhuman primates, with 2024’s total surpassing 27,000 individuals.
But, they don’t want us to see their victims as individuals. They don’t want us to see them at all.
They want us to see widgets — and they say as much.
In their very own words, the NPRCs:
- Brag about their “production of well-characterized primates”, offering that ““it takes us a while to create a macaque we can use for research unless, of course, there is research on infants that is involved” (because infants can be fast-tracked for exploitation).
- Rank approaches to the forced breeding as “cost-effective” production methods.
- Describe transferring animals between industry players as “harvesting” their “production” (or, when they’re feeling clever, as “like magic” — as if monkeys are pulled from a hat instead of bred into existence and condemned to lives of incarceration and misery).
This isn’t science. This is the discounting and trafficking of sentient life — and we’re being forced to fund every step of it.
Through NIH grants, we (taxpayers) are forced to bankroll the NPRCs’ infrastructure and operations, as well as much of their research — which has included and continues to include subjecting nonhuman primates to every kind of suffering. And, these grants are padded with some of the highest indirect cost rates in the entire system — around “80% extra money to just do whatever they want” on top of the actual (or direct) research budget.
As PETA rightly puts it, the NPRCs are among “the most bloated drains on taxpayer-funded experiments” that have “killed hundreds of thousands of monkeys while siphoning billions of taxpayer dollars for experiments that consistently fail to deliver promised vaccines or cures for deadly human diseases”.
Meanwhile, ethical, effective, human-relevant science is underfunded and under-prioritized — shoved aside and ignored to preserve institutions built on Cold War logic that continues to harm us all.
As long as the NPRCs continue to play a “national leadership role” in animal experimentation, we will remain mired in the tragedies of past missteps.
That’s why cutting their funding is a critical step, not only toward ending the false choice between “us versus them”, but toward demanding a future built on peace — not war.
Your call to action: Support the SPARE Act to end wasteful, taxpayer-funded animal research.
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