Wake Forest Cancels Course Using Monkeys After Medical Ethics Group Files State and Federal Complaints

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.—Wake Forest University has cancelled a medical training course scheduled for Aug. 4-7 that would have allowed pediatricians in training and others to perform invasive procedures on young vervet monkeys. The cancellation follows federal and state complaints by the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a medical ethics group with more than 17,000 doctor members. On Aug. 5, the course registration Webpage stated, “This training workshop has been cancelled.”

The Physicians Committee sent letters to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine dean on July 24, requesting cancellation of the course and a halt to funding for Wake Forest’s colony of vervet monkeys. In the letters, the doctors noted that they have “never heard of a single medical center using monkeys” for this type of training. More than 200 pediatrics programs in the U.S. and Canada teach procedures with lifelike newborn simulators, which Wake Forest owns, and shadowing of senior physicians.

The medical ethics group also asked the Forsyth County Sheriff and North Carolina Attorney General to intervene. In a formal animal cruelty complaint filed July 30, the Physicians Committee explained that the procedures were likely to cause pain, suffering, injury, and potentially death.

The animals that would have been used in the course are part of a vervet colony that has received more than $12.5 million in funding from the NIH since 2012—including $1 million earlier this year. The Physicians Committee is calling on the agency to halt funding for the colony.

"We are relieved that Wake Forest has responded to our call to stop this cruel and unusual use of monkeys,” said Harvard-trained pediatrician Margaret Peppercorn, MD, FAAP, of Portsmouth, R.I., who signed the letters to the NIH and university.

“We hope this convinces the NIH to cancel funding for this monkey colony that is failing to benefit patients,” said Physicians Committee director of research advocacy Ryan Merkley.

The Physicians Committee points out the NIH’s funding of the colony is out of step with the NIH’s recent effort to prioritize human-based research methods and reduce the use of animals. The group points to experiments conducted using the colony related to Alzheimer’s, aging, obesity, and metabolic diseases that failed to benefit patients and that could have been done in humans or with human-relevant methods. One experiment forced 30 female vervets through a maze—including a pregnant monkey who carried her infant during the test—only to conclude that older animals walked slower. A paper published about the experiment acknowledged that numerous human clinical studies have been conducted on the issue but dismissed those studies as “difficult and expensive.”

To speak with Dr. Peppercorn or Mr. Merkley, please contact Reina Pohl at 202-527-7326 or rpohl [at] pcrm.org (rpohl[at]pcrm[dot]org).