Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) issued a letter on Wednesday to the National Institute of Health (NIH) inquiring about a population of primates being held in at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory (RML) on Morgan Island, located in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, which she represents.
Mace wrote: “Taxpayers should not be forced to spend $20 billion per year on wasteful and cruel experiments involving dogs, cats, monkeys, and other animals.” Mace describes RML as “a biosafety level 4 facility that experiments with highly deadly and contagious pathogens” including COVID and Ebola.
Mace added: “If they [NIH] have a moral compass, a prompt response is crucial.”
Note: For more than 40 years, Morgan Island has been used to breed monkeys for federal government research laboratories. The controversy around the facility has been well-documented, with a Post and Courier article reporting how it “pits animal rights groups against medical researchers who say experiments on monkeys save countless human lives.”
Taxpayers should not be forced to spend $20 billion per year on wasteful and cruel experiments involving dogs, cats, monkeys, and other animals. 🚫🐾 We've penned a letter to NIH, seeking answers to pressing questions. If they have a moral compass, a prompt response is crucial… pic.twitter.com/sAoD8bNFcY
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) January 31, 2024
This isn’t the first letter Mace has sent to the NIH regarding the controversial monkey breeding colony on Morgan Island. In November 2021, she sent a similar letter to then NIAID Director, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Mace’s latest letter links to articles in the right-leaning tabloid Daily Mail about an NIH laboratory in Montana, and references evidence (videos. photos) allegedly in the possession of the White Coat Waste Project, an animal rights group which sued the NIH for access to information under FOIA.
The organization, which has been accused of attacking Fauci with misinformation, thanked Mace in a statement for pursuing an inquiry into the primate experiments and pushed the narrative that “dangerous primate experiments” can “cause a devastating lab leak and pandemic right here in the U.S.” White Coat Waste Project added: “Stop the money. Stop the madness!” — reiterating the organization’s slogan.
[Note: Louise Linton, wife of former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the Trump administration Steven Mnuchin, sits on the White Coat Waste Project advisory board.]