For many people, NASA represents cutting-edge science and grandiose achievements like sending a human to the moon. Unfortunately, future NASA plans are not so inspiring.

NASA has announced that it plans to expose approximately two dozen squirrel monkeys to dangerous space radiation in a cruel and frivolous experiment that purportedly aims to study the health effects of radiation in deep space. Space-radiation exposure in monkeys can cause them to suffer from fatal types of cancer, including brain tumors, and other illnesses.

Because of drastic biological differences between species, radiation experiments on monkeys won't tell scientists anything about how astronauts will react to deep space. Luckily, modern in vitro and clinical research methods are available and can be used to study the affects of space radiation on the human body.

In the past, NASA has halted plans to use monkeys in space experiments when the public spoke out against this cruelty, and animals need your support once again. Please contact NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. and politely ask him to permanently halt plans to conduct radiation experiments using monkeys and to instead direct their funds to modern and humane methods of scientific inquiry.