‘Dinosaurs’ to Tail FLOTUS in Push for Progressive NIH Director

For Immediate Release:
October 22, 2021

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

Detroit – National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins is stepping down, and PETA supporters in giant blow-up dinosaur costumes will follow first lady Dr. Jill Biden to Sunday’s Yeshiva Beth Yehuda dinner carrying signs that read, “Biden, Don’t Appoint Another NIH Dinosaur.” PETA is urging the first lady to persuade the president to take the country out of the scientific Stone Age by choosing a visionary replacement who will end the agency’s funding of animal tests and instead invest in state-of-the-art, animal-free research methods.

When:    Sunday, October 24, 3:30 p.m.

Where:    At the intersection of E. Jefferson Avenue and Randolph Street, Detroit

With Collins at the helm, NIH squandered nearly half its budget—$19.5 billion in 2020—on animal experiments every year, even though 95% of new drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials and more than 90% of basic research, most of which involves animals, fails to lead to treatments for humans. The Research Modernization Deal, developed by PETA scientists, provides a strategy for phasing out these studies.

“By clinging to outdated experiments on animals, NIH is getting in the way of good science,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on President Biden to move us into the 21st century with a new NIH director who understands that new treatments, vaccines, and cures will come from modern, human-relevant research.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

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 Ingrid E. Newkirk

“Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?” READ MORE

— Ingrid E. Newkirk, PETA President and co-author of Animalkind