The FDA, NIH, and VA are among the federal agencies promising to make a “paradigm shift” in animal research and testing by using new techniques like AI-based computational modeling, lab testing on human organs and data analysis. The pressure for change comes from an unlikely coalition of animal rights activists and bipartisan members of Congress who want to halt what animal rights groups estimate as $20 billion a year in federal spending for animal experiments.
MADELEINE MAY: The Trump administration has canceled nearly $28 million of federal grants for animal testing as major federal health agencies are phasing out research on live animals in favor of new alternatives, a joint investigation by CBS News and The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, has found.
“We’re witnessing a watershed moment right now,” said Justin Goodman, the senior vice president of White Coat Waste, an animal rights nonprofit. “We have an administration that’s skeptical of spending, skeptical of establishment science. … We are trying to slash and burn as much animal testing funding as possible.”
The pressure for change comes from an unlikely coalition of animal rights activists and bipartisan members of Congress who want to halt what animal rights groups estimate as $20 billion a year in federal spending for animal experiments. Long considered a cause of the left, the animal rights movement has expanded and gained steam under the Trump administration. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is leading the charge against high drug costs, vaccine safety and the grinding approval process required to bring innovations to market…
Since President Trump took office, all major federal health agencies have promised to phase out animal research, with varying degrees of effectiveness. The Veterans Administration says it is on track, as promised, to end all primate research that’s been used to develop new treatments for neurological disorders, alcoholism and mental problems.
The sprawling National Institutes of Health has agreed to phase out experiments with dogs, cats and primates, but watchdogs have found recent examples of the agency launching new animal research. Federal money has continued to flow to incomplete research projects and to contractors who breed and care for thousands of animals bound for laboratories…
The effort has sparked uncertainty in South Carolina, where a research company maintains a free-ranging monkey colony on secluded Morgan Island, where nearly 4,000 federally owned rhesus monkeys bask in the sun until they are shipped off to federal laboratories.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Charleston Republican, has been a leader in the animal rights fight, joined by White Coat Waste, a group that counts billionaire Elon Musk among its supporters. Mace has introduced legislation to end federally funded animal research. She also recently inserted language in a House spending bill to force the NIH to justify continued spending on Morgan Island, which is more popularly known as “Monkey Island.”
“Honestly, it’s heartbreaking,” Goodman told CBS News and The Post and Courier on a recent visit to waters surrounding the island. As Goodman watched, rhesus mothers and babies romped on the island’s sandy beach and stared down from palmetto trees. But each year, hundreds are “taken from this wild habitat with their friends, with their families and shipped to laboratories. They’re gonna be socially isolated in tiny cages by themselves and subjected to some of the most barbaric painful experiments you can imagine,” he said. His group’s mission, Goodman said, is to “slash as much animal funding as possible”…
Now, the FDA is now among the agencies promising to make a “paradigm shift” in how new drugs are approved.It wants to use new techniques like AI-based computational modeling, lab testing on human organs and data analysis to “get safer treatments to patients faster and more reliably while also reducing R&D costs and drug prices,” said FDA commissioner Martin Makary. “It is a win-win for public health and ethics.”
There’s still a major hurdle with phasing out all federal animal research. The science behind alternatives is rapidly evolving, but many experts say it’s not yet ready to serve as the only gauge of safety and effectiveness in humans.
“I want to see us get out of the business of using animals in research,” said Paul Locke, who is an environmental health lawyer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and serves on the board of the school’s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. “The question is when. When can we do that and reach the double goal of having better science and virtually no animals? The answer is not tomorrow”. SOURCE…
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