HUGE VICTORY! CDC to End All Its Monkey Experiments—a Historic Win for Animals, Public Health, and Science

HUGE VICTORY! In a seismic win for animals and science, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced that it will phase out cruel experiments on monkeys in its laboratories—a long-overdue move that PETA has fought for relentlessly. PETA is thanking the administration for taking this decisive, visionary step and acknowledging what mountains of evidence have made clear: Experiments on monkeys aren’t delivering for humans, nowhere more obvious than the four-decade failure to produce a marketable HIV vaccine. Today, we’re celebrating a historic turning point—one that protects public health, respects endangered species, and helps propel research into a modern, animal-free future.

A Major Blow to the Dangerous, Deadly Monkey Experimentation Industry

For years, U.S. laboratories have been funneling in endangered—and often infected—macaques through a reckless, disease-ridden pipeline. The CDC’s own data paints a disturbing picture: monkeys arriving infected with tuberculosis, melioidosis, and other dangerous pathogens; testing protocols rife with red flags; and a supply chain riddled with escapes, disease lapses, and repeated regulatory failures.

PETA has exposed these dangers at every turn—including in August 2025, when we held a press conference outside of the Department of Health and Human Services and released a report revealing the true and hidden scope of the tuberculosis threat. The report highlighted a CDC study confirming that from 2021 to 2024, 69 tuberculosis cases were detected while monkeys were in quarantine and another 16 after they were shipped off to laboratories. Today’s announcement proves that the system is finally confronting the truth.

Experiments on monkeys don’t just fail science and put the public at risk—they’re unimaginably cruel. In their natural habitats, macaques form lifelong bonds, nurture their young, and roam miles each day through lush, diverse forests. In laboratories, their lives are a waking nightmare. In addition to experimenters tormenting and killing them in tests, monkeys in laboratories have starved, choked to death on their own vomit, been mauled by other stressed monkeys, and died in other horrific ways. There is no justification for the suffering of these social, emotional animals.

We Need Your Help to Secure More Wins Like This

While we celebrate this historic victory, our work isn’t over. PETA is calling on the administration to build on this incredible breakthrough: shut down the National Primate Research Centers, end the monkey-import pipeline that repeatedly undermines biosecurity and conservation efforts, and move every federal agency toward modern, human-relevant science. Now, every other federally funded primate facility must be next—and your support can help make that happen.