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With a new administration taking the helm at the White House, the time is NOW to replace experiments on animals with far more effective, animal-free methods.
To assist the new administration in its goal of cutting waste and safeguarding human health, PETA scientists have released Research Modernization NOW, a bold, inventive strategy to end failed experiments on animals and transition to cutting-edge, human-relevant science.
More than 110 million animals are killed in U.S. laboratories every year, yet experiments on animals funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with billions of taxpayer dollars fail to produce effective treatments or cures for neurological disease, many forms of cancer, sepsis, and other disabling and deadly conditions.
Research Modernization NOW, an update to our groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal, is the only comprehensive, commonsense 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 experiments in specific disease areas. For example:
| Alzheimer’s disease | 99.6% |
| Cancer | 96.6% |
| HIV vaccine | 100.0% |
| Stroke | 100.0% |
| Sepsis | 100.0% |
About 90% of basic research, most of which involves experiments on animals, fails to lead to effective treatments for humans, and 95% of new drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human trials, sometimes causing severe side effects such as anaphylaxis or even death.
The new report also explains why the existing checks and balances that should stop this waste aren’t working, how a transition to animal-free research would benefit the economy, and why there’s no better time than NOW for U.S. leadership to propel science forward.
Research Modernization NOW recommends these actionable steps:
- End animal use in research areas where animals are poor “models” of humans and their use has impeded scientific and medical progress.
- Conduct systematic reviews of the efficacy of animal use to identify additional areas in which non-animal methods are available or animal use has failed to protect human health and can stop.
- Redirect funds from animal studies to reliable, non-animal methods.
- Implement a harm-benefit analysis system for animal studies that includes an ethical perspective and consideration of lifelong harm inflicted on animals.
- Educate the scientific community about the benefits of non-animal approaches and train scientists to use them.
Research Modernization NOW can fuel a transformation, steering taxpayer dollars away from funding the cruelty that fails to provide the discoveries needed to promote human health. It can be initiated immediately.
What You Can Do
If you’re in the U.S., please TAKE ACTION today and support PETA’s Research Modernization NOW.
Support Animal-Free Science
Everyone can watch The Failed Experiment, a shocking 6-episode docuseries produced by PETA Honorary Director Bill Maher that lays bare the failure of current methods of medical research, which rely heavily on cruel and useless experiments on our fellow animals.
Watch The Failed Experiment
