April 20-26 marks World Week for Animals in Laboratories, an event initiated over thirty years ago. Around the world, concerned people will deconstruct the myth that animal experiments are a “necessary evil,” and expose that they are an inhumane and inefficient way to conduct biomedical research.
In February, 2008, three key U.S. government agencies arrived at a revolutionary agreement to begin phasing out animal testing and instead pursue innovative and animal-free methods to evaluate the safety of new drugs and chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mapped out a five-year plan that utilizes cutting-edge technology to replace the use of animals. The agreement is based on a report issued by the National Research Council (NRC) in June, 2007, which concluded that ending reliance on animal tests will allow scientists to more accurately and reliably predict health risks.
Yet despite the government’s acknowledgement that significant biological differences between species miscalculate the safety of drugs and chemicals, the NIH still devotes about two-thirds of its $29.2 billion budget to animal research. This includes many millions spent on cruel and ridiculous animal experiments to purportedly study the effects of nicotine, alcohol, and other addictive drugs on humans. It’s time for the NIH to apply the scientific rationale from the NRC report to all areas of research and scale back funding of wasteful and grotesque animal experiments.
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