PETA Files Amicus Brief in NIH Lawsuit: ‘Don’t Trust Data From Greedy Animal Experimenters’

For Immediate Release:
May 19, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA has filed an amicus brief that corrects misinformation presented by animal experimenters in their legal battle against the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) February decision to slash grants funding experiments.

PETA’s brief, filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, argues that courts shouldn’t rely on information provided by experimenters when determining what constitutes “irreparable harm.”

The Massachusetts District Court on March 5 granted an injunction preventing NIH from enforcing its funding cuts. The order was in part based on claims from institutions engaged in animal experimentation asserting that if the cuts begin, experimenters will be forced to euthanize many of the animals in their custody jeopardizing years of experiments they claim are critical to “pioneering biomedical advances that benefit human health.”

But PETA’s brief points out that these self-interested claims ignore the plain fact that the overwhelming majority of animals are killed at the end of the tests anyway, as their bodies and minds are too broken to undergo further experimentation. Experimenters’ claims also vastly overstate the benefits of animal experimentation.  

PETA’s brief counters that animal experimentation does not reliably translate to human health benefits. At least one study found that fewer than 10 percent of highly touted research published in prestigious journals, much of which used animals, led to reliable human cures or treatments within 20 years. NIH has acknowledged that 95 percent of new treatments found safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials. In April, NIH announced it would reduce animal experimentation while pivoting to state-of-the-art, human-relevant methods.

PETA’s brief also notes that federal courts have recognized harms threatening animal well-being, standing alone and without any need to consider purported contributions to these institutions, can constitute “irreparable harm” justifying injunctive relief.

“The University of Washington and other institutions that are poisoning, mutilating, and killing animals in pointless experiments while flushing millions in tax dollars down the drain are those causing ‘irreparable harm,’” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA urges the court not to be taken in by money-hungry experimenters, who have refused to switch to animal-free research that helps humans.”

The University of Washington, whose claims the District Court heavily relied on, is home to the Washington National Primate Research Center, which pockets an outrageous 83.1 percent indirect cost rate to prop up its crumbling, scandal-ridden operation. The center has racked up dozens of violations of federal animal welfare laws—each one more horrifying than the last. One monkey was irradiated to death by an experimenter who ignored her own protocol. Another had his lungs blown out by a broken anesthetic machine. Countless others have been starved through staff negligence, torn apart by stressed cage-mates, choked on their own vomit, or suffered unchecked diarrheal diseases.

The facility is one of seven National Primate Research Centers, which are among the most bloated drains on taxpayer-funded experiments, with sky-high indirect costs under NIH grants. Over the past six decades, these primate centers have killed hundreds of thousands of monkeys while siphoning billions of taxpayer dollars for experiments that consistently fail to deliver promised vaccines or cures for deadly human diseases.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.