‘Go Dark’: NIH Ghosts PETA, Continues Funding Pointless Experiments

As reported in the Daily Caller, top officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) routinely conducted off-the-books policy and planning discussions using personal e-mail accounts instead of government accounts and did everything that they could to sweep this practice under the rug. That’s until PETA sued, forcing the agency to turn over records that NIH officials didn’t want you to see.

Brought to You by the Maker of the ‘Rape Rack’ and the ‘Pit of Despair’

After learning that former NIH Director Francis Collins and his staff conducted work conversations using their personal e-mail accounts, PETA requested e-mails related to our 2014 investigation into the dark and twisted experiments on monkeys conducted by Stephen Suomi, co-creator of animal torture devices, including the “rape rack’’ and the “pit of despair.”

NIH refused to provide these e-mails—as required by the Freedom of Information Act—so PETA sued. We pried 246 pages of secret e-mail discussions from NIH’s clutches, all conducted between April and July of 2014.

101 Ways to Subvert Public Scrutiny by Francis Collins

In numerous conversations among Collins and top-level staffers, the e-mails show that the primary concerns at NIH were protecting the reputations of its own personnel, avoiding unwanted scrutiny, and securing its own perpetuation. At the nation’s premier medical research agency, sound science was seemingly not a top consideration.

Nor was transparency. Collins and his right-hand woman—former Deputy Director for Science, Outreach, and Policy Kathy Hudson—hammered out strategies for the taxpayer-funded government agency in the shadows, expending a great deal of effort to avoid scrutiny from the very public that pays their salaries and funds their gruesome experiments. NIH thought it so important to keep these conversations secret that it forced PETA to go to court in an expensive and lengthy process.

“I think I described the place as a death camp.”

—Kathy Hudson

At the heart of the four-month-long e-mail exchange is PETA’s investigation into Suomi’s NIH laboratory in Poolesville, Maryland, which produced hundreds of photographs and more than 500 hours of video taken inside the facility, detailing ongoing psychological abuse of baby monkeys in cruel and archaic experiments.

PETA, along with celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall, who also spoke on behalf of PETA and in support of the Suomi investigation, requested a meeting with Collins to discuss the findings of the investigation prior to publication. In an e-mail to Collins, she included disturbing PETA video footage taken inside Suomi’s lab.

NIH went into crisis mode. Hudson, who was the first to circle the wagons around Collins, recognized the threat to the agency’s reputation immediately, because she also had apparently reviewed other disturbing video from another NIH-funded lab.

“This is complicated,” she replied to Collins. “I have a new set of HSUS videos of really gross conditions at Texas Biomed… I think I described the place as a death camp.”

‘Go Dark’ and Keep Collins’ Hands Clean at All Costs

Because of her “bulldog protective instincts,” Hudson, who left NIH in 2016, took the lead in the coordinated stonewalling that followed.

“You need to stay at a distance,” she said in an e-mail sent to Collins in May.

He did, although he also wrote to someone, whose name has been redacted in the e-mails, for advice. “My new friend Jane Goodall has contacted me to alert me to videos obtained by PETA that show behavioral research on newborn rhesus macaques (see below),” Collins writes. “I was pretty troubled by the video.”

Meanwhile, Hudson concocted a new narrative out of whole cloth. “The story line is that I got this video,” she writes. “You [Collins] are not connected.” In a July 1 e-mail to Collins, she again advises: “Do not engage in emails on this with Jane [Goodall] or PETA.” Later, she lays out the whole plan to Collins: “You don’t respond,” she writes to Collins in a July 21 e-mail. “If you want, I can send a note saying thanks for the meeting and materials. Then we go dark. There is no benefit to continued discussion unless u want to start ww3. We don’t negotiate. We listened. That is all.”

Collins falls in line. “I will remain silent,” he responded.

Without a shred of irony, in a July 22 e-mail, Hudson admonishes PETA staffers for using Collins’ personal e-mail, ignoring that she has conducted government business over personal e-mail accounts. “I would ask that you stop using his [Collins] personal email address. He has asked me to handle these issues but if you feel compelled to communicate with him, his work address is [email protected].”

Let’s Just Keep That Quiet, Shall We?

NIH bigwigs, including Hudson, engaged in a flurry of e-mails to create extensive talking points for Collins’ use at an upcoming meeting with PETA and to find ways to discredit the video from Suomi’s lab. Some even suggested that NIH hire the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a pro–animal experimentation lobbying group, for help creating just the right message. At one point, NIH officials also debated whether to release a sanitized version of monkey experimentation proactively to dampen the blow of the PETA footage.

That didn’t sit right with Hudson.

“In fact, most folks are unaware that NIH has a bunch of primates and we might just be raising awareness that does not need to be raised,” Hudson said in a June 26 e-mail.

NIH Officials Discussing Science: ‘It Is Just Really Hard to Get Exactly the Right Story’

Hudson provided Collins with numerous talking points for a July conversation with Goodall about the Suomi video, none of which address specifically whether the horror that PETA uncovered produced any human-relevant data. It dismissed our footage as sensational and claimed that the experiments were no longer being conducted anyway. Hudson’s script also said in no uncertain terms that no “personnel or other action” would be taken in light of the video and that NIH would continue to conduct experiments on monkeys.

As a last bit of advice to Collins, Hudson wrote in the July 21 e-mail: “I would not get into a big discussion about the science since it is just really hard to get exactly the right story.”

Take Action for Monkeys Used in Experiments

Despite NIH’s secretive tactics and outright deception about its experiments on baby monkeys, PETA and our supporters prevailed, shutting down the laboratory. Yet, the agency continues to fund similarly cruel and pointless experiments on monkeys—including those at the National Primate Research Centers—and other animals in laboratories across the country. Take action today to help end this suffering.