Former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins used a private email to discuss an NIH lab’s history of traumatizing baby monkeys as he sought to contain a brewing scandal and kept funding the experiments to save face despite knowing they had little scientific value, previously unreported emails show.
Collins is not the first federal employee in NIH leadership found to have allegedly used private email for official business or used other methods to avoid the Freedom of Information Act. His longtime top aide, former Deputy Director for Science, Outreach and Policy Kathy Hudson, also used her personal email. Previous reporting has indicated that Anthony Fauci and three of his longtime staffers at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases also allegedly used private email or otherwise evaded public records law.
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The revelation comes amid questions about the ability of NIH and other agencies to self-police their spending as tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency unearths waste. The emails give a window into how NIH leadership has grappled with accusations of waste or fraud in the past: To batten down the hatches and evade public scrutiny.
Collins and Hudson did not respond to requests for comment.
Screaming Baby Monkeys
The controversial experiments in question induced mental illness in baby rhesus macaques in a manner meant to mimic childhood abuse. Video footage of the experiments shows the monkeys shrieking in distress. In one clip a researcher can be heard laughing.
A 63-year-old former juvenile detention facility worker named Catherine Driessen sent a letter to Collins about “seemingly untethered federal spending” and asked for details about how the research had “actually helped children.”
“Every year our budget application was a tortuous process … Now child services agencies are under even more financial pressure,” she wrote. “What I would like to know is how the findings of this primate research have been applied in practical treatments/programs for the benefit of children.”
But the experiments continued for 20 months as Collins sought to avoid a public relations victory for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which had recruited famed primatologist Jane Goodall to their cause, emails obtained by PETA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show.
The Collins emails span from April to July 2014 and were obtained by PETA through a years-long FOIA lawsuit in August 2020 but have not been previously reported.
Stephen Suomi was the principal investigator of some of the experiments that PETA spotlighted. Suomi was a psychologist who had run a lab with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Poolesville, Maryland, since 1983. Suomi, like his former mentor Harold Harlow, conducted studies that afflicted monkeys with anxiety and fear in order to study the role of genes and the environment on infant development.
But some of the techniques used by Harlow have become infamous among animal rights advocates. Harlow described a device for isolating baby monkeys and studying their mental decline — an inverted pyramid steel cage — as the “pit of despair.” In order to compel depressed female monkeys to mate, he used a restraining technique he dubbed the “rape rack.”
The experiments shown in the video compiled by PETA were not as extreme, but did involve provoking panic with loud noises, humans in masks, and by rendering the young monkeys’ mothers incapacitated.
Critics argue the nonhuman primate studies are antiquated and that human psychiatric diseases are better studied with more modern techniques such as neuroimaging studies.
Suomi received roughly $19.7 million in funding from the NIH from 2007 to 2018, according to NIH RePORTER.
Suomi did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Third Rate’ Experiments
After Goodall first approached him, Collins quietly sought the expertise of a scientist with a lot of experience on NIH study sections reviewing non-human primate research. Apparently this researcher had flagged that much of this sort of research was “pointless” before.
“I could use your advice. My new friend Jane Goodall has contacted me to alert me to videos obtained by PETA that show behavioral research on newborn rhesus macaques (see below). I was pretty troubled by the video – but the investigator Stephen Suomi (NICHD intramural) is apparently well respected by his peers,” Collins told the scientist, whose name is redacted in the FOIA’d emails. “Of course most of our colleagues view PETA as evil, or even as a terrorist organization. … But as I wrestle with what to do here, your own observations, based on study section service, about the pointlessness of much of the research being conducted on non-human primates is ringing in my ears.”
The scientist replied that the experiments traumatizing baby monkeys only resulted in already obvious conclusions and that modern techniques on human subjects were more accurate.
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“I think the PETA involvement will cause many in the scientific community to circle their bandwagons without much critical thought,” he said. “In my humble opinion, Steve’s studies do not have a truly significant practical impact on human life.”
Separately, a prominent scientist told Hudson the experiments should be phased out. Tom Insel, who directed the National Institute of Mental Health for 13 years, described the experiments as “third rate.”
“Tom said that he has always been annoyed that Suomi’s work is basically doing in macaques what has already been shown in humans,” Hudson said. “He called it third rate and said it is time for Suomi to retire.”
Still, Insel advised Hudson on how to navigate the controversy with PETA.
“Suspect we will hear from PETA when they make this public. So would plot our response now,” he said.
Despite the animal cruelty and the feedback from scientists that the research held little scientific value, NIH prioritized Collins’s reputation. NIH kept the experiments running.
Insulating NIH Top Brass
Collins used Gmail as his staff sought to conceal the fact that he had seen the video footage and that he was involved in strategizing a response.
“Anything we do will be seen as precedent for all NIH research and that is dangerous for you. That caused overexpression of my bulldog protective instincts,” Hudson wrote. “You need to stay at a distance.”
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Hudson advised that they should create the impression that she alone had received the video.
“The story line is that I got this video. You are not connected,” she wrote on May 24, 2014.
“I have decided that it would be best if I meet with the folks from PETA on my own, especially to show that while I am willing to listen, NIH is not debating the scientific merits of this research with this organization,” Hudson said on June 26, 2014.
“Met with PETA today. Went fine. Do not engage in emails on this with Jane or PETA,” Hudson wrote to Collins on July 1, 2014.
Hudson attempted to downplay the controversy, hoping PETA would be satisfied with the meeting.
“We need to bring the chat with PETA to an end,” Hudson told Collins two days later.
She said that NIH counter-messaging could increase awareness of their nonhuman primate research and advised Collins to simply “go dark.”
“I can send a note saying thanks for the meeting and materials. Then we go dark. There is no benefit to continued discussion unless u want to start ww3,” Hudson said. “We don’t negotiate. We listened. That is all.”
“Yep, please send a note. I will remain silent,” Collins replied.
Ghosted by NIH, PETA publicly revealed their findings on September 8, 2014. They launched months of ads and protests including, controversially, letters appealing to the neighbors of Collins and Suomi.
On January 27, 2015, PETA held a congressional briefing. NIH responded to the increased public pressure that month by insisting that the experiments were indispensable — a direct contradiction to what scientists had told Collins and his staff privately.
“These studies cannot be carried out in humans and require the use of animal studies to carefully separate experience, genetic and environmental factors,” an NIH statement read.
In December 2015, 20 months after PETA had initiated communications with NIH in April 2014, NIH directed Suomi to phase out the experiments but continued to provide funding for the analysis of existing data. NIH insisted the move was a budgetary decision and unrelated to PETA’s campaign.
A Pattern Of Private Emails
The emails follow a similar pattern to the one exposed among Anthony Fauci’s inner circle at the NIAID.
Fauci made use of a private email address for official business, other emails released under FOIA indicate. David Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci for about 20 years, sought to use Gmail to avoid FOIA and even discussed deleting any potential “smoking guns” related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a congressional investigation revealed in May 2024. Morens later defended the comment as “black humor.” The National Archives and Records Administration investigated Morens in 2023.
Morens said in other private correspondence in that he had been instructed on how to avoid FOIA by Fauci’s longtime personal aide Margaret Moore, who served as the FOIA public liaison from at the time. Asked to testify about this by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Moore pled the fifth.
Greg Folkers, who served as Fauci’s chief of staff for about 16 years, apparently made strategic misspellings so keywords would not be picked up in FOIA searches when discussing the connection between the NIH and the Wuhan lab, according to the committee. Folkers replaced certain letters with special characters like asterisks and dollar signs.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
