PETA has found even more reasons to ask your legislators to take action and dam the flood of taxpayer money that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses to bankroll pointless experiments on animals in foreign countries. Not only does PETA point out that these experiments are cruel and deadly, we’ve also found that some have been so riddled with lies and unnecessary agony that scientific journals retracted studies they published about them.

Tax-Funded Falsifications

Experimenters at Henan University of Science and Technology in China injected cancer cells into mice, causing the animals to grow large ulcers and tumors. After allowing the mice to suffer with their wounds, experimenters falsified graphs to misrepresent the magnitude of their pain. Their paper was retracted due to serious animal welfare concerns, the failure to adhere to minimum ethical standards, and the exceedance of “internationally-accepted limits” for the size of tumors grown in mice. NIH had given tax money to University of Louisville experimenter Richard J. Lamont to carry out this experiment. He, in turn, outsourced his dirty work to the experimenters in China.

Modified from Figure 2 in Xu GS, Li ZW, Huang ZP, et al. MiR-497-5p inhibits cell proliferation and metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma by targeting insulin-like growth factor 1. Mol. Genet. Genomic Med. 2019;7(10):e00860. | CC BY-NC 4.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International | Creative CommonsMice were killed after suffering from tumors in NIH-funded experiments conducted at Yunnan University of Chinese Traditional Medicine in China.

Experimenters at Yunnan University of Chinese Traditional Medicine in China also subjected mice to painful cancer experiments, deliberately causing the small animals to grow large tumors. After weeks of torment, the mice were killed. The experimenters then faked their graphs and lied about their data, leading to the retraction of their paper. NIH had awarded tax money to U.S. experimenter F. Charles Brunicardi, affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and the University of California–Los Angeles, who also passed the work off to experimenters in China.

There’s no way to undo the senseless abuse of animals in these tests, but we can end funding for animal experiments overseas.

Help End Funding for Foreign Animal Experiments

The bipartisan Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act (HR 4757) would safeguard U.S. taxpayers from more overseas fraud by preventing NIH from awarding any additional public funding to foreign entities for experiments on animals.

If you’re in the U.S., please take action now to urge your U.S. representative to cosponsor the CARGO Act today:

And everyone can take action to urge NIH to stop funding cruel and deadly experiments on monkeys: