To the Editor:
The CDC is charged with preventing diseases, but a bombshell PETA report just revealed that the agency has been knowingly funneling deadly tuberculosis (TB) into U.S. laboratories for years.
Thousands of monkeys are flown to the U.S. for experiments every year from Southeast Asia or Mauritius—countries the CDC admits have lax biosecurity. The terrified animals are packed in wooden crates and often arrive sick, bleeding, and covered in waste.
Between 2021 and 2024, the CDC’s own data show 69 infected monkeys arriving on 17 separate shipments. Each year, the number of infected shipments increased. Even worse, CDC quarantine missed nearly one in five infected monkeys. Half of those “missed” animals came from shipments where another monkey had already tested positive, yet the CDC cleared the rest for shipment to laboratories. You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to see how reckless this is.
Outbreaks have already occurred, including at a Michigan laboratory, where months after being released from CDC quarantine, at least three monkeys developed TB and two workers were exposed. This infectious disease is a threat to domestic animals and wildlife, too. And, while experimenting on monkeys is ineffective to begin with, doing so on already sick animals guarantees failure.
The Department of Health and Human Services can and must end this crisis today, by halting imports of monkeys into U.S. laboratories.
Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel
Senior Science Advisor, Primate Experimentation
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)