It’s time to rethink medical research | Opinion – South Florida Sun Sentinel

In many cases, taxpayers are footing the bill for these pointless experiments. In the 1960s, Congress instituted the NIH Primate Research Centers program, charged with importing and breeding monkeys and other primates for experimenters and developing supposed primate “models” for human disease. The primate centers receive tens of millions of taxpayer dollars via NIH every single year. But 60 years and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of monkeys later, they have failed to produce the promised cures and treatments for human illnesses.