It was just pure luck that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals‘ protesting monkey ran into Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington this month.
But Kennedy didn’t turn away, and the monkey didn’t jeer. Instead, the secretary asked to pose with the monkey and a fellow T. rex for a couple of photos, a sign of his support for limiting animal testing at national health agencies.
“We met Secretary Kennedy in D.C. recently, and he suggested we take the picture. As you know, we’re big fans of his commitment to reducing the use of animals for experimentation and improving science,” Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president of laboratory investigations for PETA, told Secrets.
Her protesting mascots, she added, are part of a campaign to “end the importation of monkeys to the U.S., both to spare the animals and because tuberculosis is pouring into the U.S. on these monkeys, creating a public health threat.”
In the photos provided by PETA, Kennedy is shown smiling and flashing a thumbs-up next to the mascots holding signs reading “Sec: Kennedy Stop Monkey Imports! Stop TB From Entering US” and “Sec: Kennedy Let’s Modernize! End Monkey Imports into US Labs.”
PETA and other animal rights activists have succeeded in recent years in pushing the government to cut its use of animal testing for drugs and cosmetics, and Kennedy has backed those efforts, recently announcing “a dramatic reduction of animal testing” at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. Instead, he said, the agencies are using artificial intelligence, which he called “much more precise in identifying the impact of toxics in various products.”
Guillermo said Kennedy was engaging during the surprise meeting on a Washington street.
“It was fun and he couldn’t have been nicer — and we had the opportunity to share a serious message: Close the border to monkeys imported to be harmed and killed in experiments,” she said. “They bring tuberculosis that is now circulating in labs across the country. Everyone wins with better, kinder research methods.”
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She also applauded Kennedy’s efforts to limit animal testing, telling Secrets, “Secretary Kennedy’s efforts to reduce the use of animals in experiments get a big thumbs-up from PETA. He understands that it’s failing to provide cures and treatment for human patients — and he’s brave enough to say it, unlike so many who came before him. They knew it was a miserable business, wasting lives and precious resources, but they lacked the courage to admit it publicly.”
Guillermo added, “He’s already put out funding opportunities that prohibit animal studies, and his emphasis on healthy living, which has been too often ignored by previous administrations, will save lives. We hope that one of his next acts will be to ban the importation of monkeys, and the diseases they bring with them, for experiments.”