PETA Scientists Release ‘Research Modernization Now’—a Blueprint for Ending NIH Waste

For Immediate Release:
January 27, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

More than 110 million animals are killed in U.S. laboratories every year, yet studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with billions of tax dollars have failed to produce effective vaccines, treatments, or cures for neurological disease, HIV, many forms of cancer, sepsis, and other top killers.

To assist the new administration in its goal of cutting this waste and safeguarding human health, PETA scientists today released Research Modernization Now, a bold, inventive strategy to end failed experiments on animals and transition to human-relevant, cutting-edge science.

“Animal experimenters who burn, poison, cut into, starve, and kill animals are running the show at NIH,” says neuroscientist and PETA Director of Science Advancement and Outreach Dr. Emily Trunnell. “Research Modernization Now shows how to stop NIH’s reckless waste, help human patients, and spare animals, but the new American leadership will need to wrest authority from the 20th-century thinkers to pull the agency into the modern era.”

Research Modernization Now is the only comprehensive, common-sense strategy for carefully replacing experiments on animals with organs-on-chips, advanced computer-modeling techniques, artificial intelligence, and other methods that use human cells, tissues, and data. It first lays out the evidence of the failure of animal experiments based on decades of studies, including failure rates of animal studies in specific disease areas. For example:

• Alzheimer’s disease………………………………………………………………99.6%

• Cancer…………………………………………………………………………………96.6%

• HIV vaccine………………………………………………………………………100.0%

• Stroke……………………………………………………………………………….100.0%

• Sepsis……………………………………………………………………………….100.0%

Although 90 percent of basic research, most of which involves animals, fails to lead to treatments, the NIH spends nearly half its annual budget on experiments on animals.

Research Modernization Now’s plan includes:

1. Immediately end animal use in research areas in which animals have been shown to be poor “models” of humans and their use has impeded scientific and medical progress.
2. Conduct systematic reviews of the efficacy of animal use to identify additional areas that can be ended.
3. Redirect funds from animal studies to reliable, non-animal methods.
4. Implement a harm-benefit analysis system for animal studies that includes an ethical perspective and consideration of lifelong harm inflicted on animals.
5. Educate and train the scientific community in the benefits of and how to use non-animal approaches.

Research Modernization Now can be initiated immediately.

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.

Note: PETA supports animal rights, opposes all forms of animal exploitation, and educates the public on those issues. PETA does not directly or indirectly participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office or any political party.