Failed Monkey Experiment Prompts PETA’s Call for Federal Investigation and Taxpayer Refund

For Immediate Release:
October 17, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a letter sent today, PETA is urging federal officials to investigate University of Massachusetts–Amherst (UMass) experimenter Agnès Lacreuse to determine whether she misused taxpayer money and/or committed research misconduct.

PETA is calling on the Office of Research Integrity, the National Institute on Aging, and the Center for Scientific Review to bar Lacreuse from receiving future federal money and to require that UMass reimburse the taxpayer funds wasted on her experiment.

Lacreuse spent approximately $340,000 for the preposterous experiment conducted at the University of Wisconsin–Madison using marmosets (who were suffering from diarrhea), purportedly to study human Alzheimer’s disease. Despite spending three years on the project and nearly 78% of her more than $400,000 budget, Lacreuse failed to complete any of the goals in her grant application and returned only about 22% of the money.

Lacreuse originally proposed torturing at least 16 marmosets and was planning to blast half of them with sounds as loud as a lawn mower every 15 minutes all night for up to two months of sleep deprivation at her UMass laboratory. She ultimately exposed just six animals to a single night of sleep loss in an experiment conducted at UW-Madison instead.

“This experiment was worthless from its beginning to its abrupt end, but it did prove one thing: Lacreuse can’t be trusted with animals’ lives or public funds,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA calls on federal officials to investigate Lacreuse’s latest experiment and prevent her from getting another red cent of taxpayer money.”

The experiment is worthless on its face, since at least eight other studies using humane, non-animal methods have already investigated the connection between sleep fragmentation and Alzheimer’s disease.

In addition to failing in her objective, Lacreuse also omitted crucial information regarding the integrity of her limited data—including that all six marmosets were suffering from chronic diarrhea and some were on medications that likely altered the experiment’s meager findings.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.