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Dear friend,
This week marks the 46th annual World Day for Animals in Laboratories, and I must say, I think it’s the most hopeful moment in the last half century in reducing painful and ineffective animal tests.
Two weeks ago, I celebrated the news that the FDA, under the leadership of Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., is seeking to phase out the use of animals in drug testing. Dr. Makary said, in a few short years, animal tests will be the exception and not the norm. This is especially significant because testing on animals for drug development represents about three-quarters of all animal testing. We are harming millions of animals, including beagles, primates, rabbits, and other sentient and sociable animals every year, and it’s got to stop.
Dr. Makary’s announcement was a direct response to the political gains we made in our “Modernize Testing” campaign—specifically our efforts in Congress to advance the FDA Modernization Act (FDAMA) and upgrades of that law known as FDAMA 2.0 and now 3.0.
We’ve noted since the inception of our “Modernize Testing” campaign in 2020 that the replacement of animals with 21st-century technologies grounded in human biology will produce a drop in drug prices, more treatments and cures for more patients in crisis, and fewer side effects for the drugs.
Dr. Makary has embraced better science and game-changing outcomes for patients in need.
When you realize that the computational models can do as good or better of a job in predicting when the lab-based organ cells test it … but it has the properties of those cells, and you can test liver toxicity or heart toxicity or myocarditis. Those models should be replacing animal testing. So, the first announcement we had when I came in as Commissioner, was to take steps to reduce unnecessary animal testing. (FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, April 17, 2025)
Dr. Makary is also keenly aware of the ethical problems with continued animal testing that doesn’t forecast human outcomes.
God did not make these animals on planet earth for us to do cruel things to them and subjugate them. It does not seem right. So, we are doing everything we can and we’re taking a lot of steps to reduce animal testing requirements and to stop unnecessary animal testing. (FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, April 17, 2025)
Pass the FDA Modernization Act 3.0
Commissioner Makary’s announcement is an earthquake in the trillion-dollar global pharmaceutical sector. But we cannot expect this kind of grand change to be self-executing.
We must steward the process, keep up the pressure for rapid change, and remind all stakeholders of the costs of delay for animals, for patients, and for the pharmaceutical industry itself.
One key action for us to complete is passing the FDA Modernization Act 3.0, led by Reps. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., and Nanette Barragán, D-Calif., as H.R. 2821, and by Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., as S. 355.
Enacting this measure will support Dr. Makary’s bold new vision to reboot drug development work in the United States.
Shutting down seven regional primate centers and two dog breeding facilities
Especially with Dr. Makary’s announcement, it seems wrong on fiscal and moral grounds for the federal government to continue to fund seven regional centers that send primates into invasive experiments and breed more primates for that purpose.
The National Primate Research Centers received approximately $88 million in 2023 for base grants, and there are millions spent on top of base funding for these. Over the next 10 years, this expense to taxpayers will be more than a billion dollars for strategies that the FDA commissioner and other science leaders note are counterproductive to human health outcomes.
Primates are not good drug testing proxies for humans. Billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of nonhuman primates’ lives are lost to unnecessary animal testing every year, yet we still have a 90-95% failure rate in human clinical trials, largely because animals do not accurately forecast the human reaction to drugs.
We also plan to apply pressure to shutter two remaining beagle breeding facilities supplying dogs for lab tests. Like the primates, dogs are also not effective “models” for testing of human disease.
Ridglan Farms in Blue Mounds, Wis., has approximately 3,200 beagles, while Marshall BioResources (MBR) in Wayne County, N.Y., has a staggering 20,000 dogs. And they’re all headed for laboratory use.
After 60 years of failure and billions in taxpayer funding, it’s time to redirect resources to the qualification and development of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs). We also must ensure that existing federal grants and funding for non-animal test research not only continue but grow. Even with increased grant funds, there will still be a net savings for the taxpayer from ending all the wasteful animal testing and research.
Commissioner Makary captured the importance of the transition to a new testing model so well: “For patients, it means a more efficient pipeline for novel treatments. It also means an added margin of safety, since human-based test systems may better predict real-world outcomes. For animal welfare, it represents a major step toward ending the use of laboratory animals in drug testing. Thousands of animals, including dogs and primates, could eventually be spared each year as these new methods take root.” (emphasis in the original)
I hope you will support our efforts to address one of the biggest problems in animal welfare. We’ve made incredible gains, but now is not the time to relent for even a minute.
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