An Open Letter From Monkeys Used in Experiments

It’s a disconnect of epic proportions.

While everyone is feeling the stress of isolation and the mounting tension that comes from hunkering down in one small place, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins and National Institute of Mental Health Director Joshua Gordon had a conversation in which they discussed dealing with stress, anxiety, and grief during the current pandemic. Their own stress, anxiety, and grief. What they personally felt—apparently without a thought for the thousands of animals they keep locked in laboratory cages.

Here’s one group of individuals painfully aware of the stress, anxiety, and grief caused by a lockdown: the monkeys trapped in cages and used in experiments carried out by NIH experimenter Elisabeth Murray and overseen by both Collins and Gordon.

And here’s what we think these monkeys would say in an open letter to Collins and Gordon about being held captive and used in archaic, terrifying, and painful experiments in NIH labs:

Dear Dr. Collins and Dr. Gordon,

We hope you’re both healthy and well during this trying time. We were interested to learn of your conversation about dealing with stress, anxiety, and grief during the current pandemic. Social isolation is difficult, as we know. We’ve been involuntarily practicing it for most of our lives.

This is new for you—the curtailment of your freedom, the restriction of your movement, a desperate feeling that you’ve lost your autonomy and that your very life is no longer your own. Dr. Gordon was right when he said that “there is tremendous grief” over this loss. Ours was so intense that for some of us, most of our hair fell out.

It’s been our experience that when you’re cooped up in the same surroundings day after day, barely able to move, the oppressiveness of the tedium can close in on you like walls pushing in from all sides, so it’s good that you’re keeping busy to prevent one day from bleeding into the next in an indistinguishable blur. Sometimes, they give us a rope to fiddle with to pass the time.

We hear you both have families with whom you can share your experiences. That’s important. We’re all primates, right? None of us does well without a circle of loved ones to connect with. Without them, things can get really dark really quickly—leading to trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, irritability, or anger, just as Dr. Gordon said. We’ve been through it all many times. At least you have a hotline number to call. It would be quite bleak living through all that with no one at all to communicate with.

But it’s the fear, right? It’s the fear that can be impossible to overcome. With this virus, there’s a very real fear that it could harm you, and those feelings can be so strong that they induce the kind of panic attack that Dr. Gordon described while speaking about his recent trip to a grocery store.

We live with this, too. We never know which day may be our last or if that snake or spider might attack. Or if the human who came for others who never returned is coming for us next. We know our time is limited, that we are expendable, and that one day, we’ll no longer be of use.

So we understand. We understand your fear, your anxiety, and your grief over what is now denied to you.

In these trying times, it’s our sincere hope that you’ll remain healthy, that you’ll be surrounded by friends and family, and that you’ll continue to find life fulfilling. That’s the way it should be.

For everyone.

Also, if you have a chance, please come and see the way we exist. (We can’t really say “live.”)

Sincerely,

The Monkeys in Elisabeth Murray’s Laboratory at NIH:

Beamish

Blofeld

El Guerrouj

Goldfinger

Gordon

Gronk

Guinness

Jaws

Le Chiffre

Mackeson

Mo’ Farah

Murphy

Watch Murphy’s heartbreaking story:

Nick Nack

Nurmi

Odd Job

Porter

Pre

Rudisha

Rupp

Sam Smith

Shorter

Smithwick

Wilfork

You Can Help Monkeys Suffering in Experiments

Join PETA and tens of thousands of compassionate people who’ve already taken action to demand that NIH stop experiments on monkeys and immediately shut down the lab where the 23 named on this page have suffered.