Harvard Still Funding Fraudulent Colombian Operation—Even After NIH Defunded It

The fallout from PETA’s 18-month investigation into the Caucaseco Scientific Research Center, the fraudulent Colombian organization that ran hellholes funded by U.S. taxpayer money, has been sweeping. Its monkey facility was shuttered, and the animals were rescued. They’re now recovering under the care of environmental authorities. What’s more, Colombian officials found Caucaseco’s human trials to be fraudulent. Legislation aimed at preventing this sort of disaster is currently being debated in the U.S., and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has finally yanked the Colombian operation’s funding.

But the more we dig, the more we find.

PETA discovered that Harvard University is among Caucaseco’s financial backers. The university has had every opportunity to distance itself publicly from the sham operation, but it has declined to respond—even after NIH pulled Caucaseco’s funding.

Here’s What We Know

Caucaseco is a recipient of Harvard grant money.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a national charitable organization, awarded a grant to the university’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which then turned over part of that money to Caucaseco. Gates Foundation officials have confirmed to PETA that as of May 31, the Colombian operation was a recipient of money awarded to Harvard.

There’s More

In August 2022, while monkeys were dying at the Primate Center Foundation—Caucaseco’s affiliated monkey facility—a Harvard professor attended a seminar there, just a few feet from the suffering caged animals.

PETA has kept officials at the T.H. Chan School informed of the latest Caucaseco developments and the investigations by Colombian authorities against Sócrates Herrera Valencia and Myriam Arévalo Ramírez, the married couple at the helm of the organization.

We’ve asked Harvard officials to distance the university from this sham organization, but they’ve remained silent.

Harvard Parallels Caucaseco’s Animal Abuse

Interestingly, Harvard is also home to another monkey experimenter on PETA’s radar: Margaret Livingstone, who has sewn baby monkeys’ eyelids shut and left the animals in complete darkness for up to a year in gruesome sensory deprivation experiments.

Harvard is also silent about her.

What You Can Do

Please TAKE ACTION today and urge your U.S. representative to support the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act, which aims to end public funding of all foreign animal laboratories so that no U.S. taxpayer dollars are ever again sent overseas for pointless animal experiments.

Then URGE HARVARD to finally cancel Livingstone’s abominable cruelty.