Moratorium on Primate Experimentation

Please consider adding your group's name to this most reasonable suggestion. Send your organization's name to info@primatefreedom.com along with a note asking to be placed on the list of supporters. Thanks.

During the last 35 years, exploitative primate research has consumed billions in American tax dollars while it has contributed very little to human welfare.

It has diverted funding from non-animal research technology that could have been more productive and from social programs - such as drug rehabilitation, prenatal care, and nutrition education - that could have benefited, directly and indirectly, the majority of the population.

While over three decades of primate-based research has not produced the promised cures for human diseases, it has taught us about the sensitivity of the nonhuman primate subjects. We now know that nonhuman primates have emotional responses remarkably similar to human emotional responses.

Apes who have learned American Sign Language (ASL) have used this human language to clearly communicate frustration, grief, and other emotions. There are convincing indications that nonhuman primates in experiments suffer as intensely, both physically and emotionally, as humans would suffer in the same experiments. Recognizing this, we are ethically compelled to stop using them in experiments.

We are calling for the creation of a Presidential advisory committee composed of primate experts and informed lay people - a panel agreed upon by both pro-animal and pro-research advocates - to critically examine the evidence and make a recommendation to the President and the nation regarding the ethical implications of continuing exploitative primate research.

Until the committee's report is finalized, federal funding for primate research should cease.

View the list of organizations asking for an Immediate Moratorium.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]