Physicians Committee Research Policy Director Speaks Today at Hearing on Taxpayer Funded Animal Cruelty

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Research Policy Director Elizabeth Baker from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a national medical ethics and health advocacy group of 17,000 physicians, spoke today, Feb. 6, at a Congressional hearing focused on ending federally funded animal cruelty in research.  

The U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Chairwoman Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) announced the hearing in a news release on Monday, with plans to evaluate current animal cruelty funded by the federal government and explore opportunities to prioritize technological alternatives that increase relevance to humans.

“To truly Make America Healthy Again, we need to make science human again.” Baker said.

“For generations, billions of federal dollars have paid scientists to conduct acts on dogs, cats, monkeys, rabbits and other animals that would shock the conscience of most Americans,” she continued.

Highlighting one particularly cruel NIH-funded study, Baker testified that “dogs have been subjected to multiple major surgeries, have devices stabbed into their hearts, and been forced to run on treadmills until they die. Despite 34 years of this work and hundreds of dead dogs, there has been no benefit to patients.”

Increasingly, it is recognized across research fields that animals are not good surrogates for humans especially when much better human-based models exist. The vast majority of Americans agree. Over 80% of more than 2,000 respondents polled in September 2024 in a Physicians Committee/Morning Consult survey agreed that animal-based research should be phased out in support of methods that do not use animals.

At the hearing, Baker asked U.S. lawmakers to end federal support for wasteful and ineffective animal research and reinvest part of the savings into human-based research approaches.

“Ending federally funded animal experiments is long overdue,” she said.  “Both Congress and the Administration must take action to ensure that government funding and requests for animal experiments are stopped, and that instead, funding is reinvested into more effective human-based approaches.”

Baker presented the Subcommittee policy changes that can easily be made to curb cruel animal research and testing, including denying funding for National Primate Research Centers that house, breed, and experiment on monkeys, ending foreign research funded by NIH which operates without oversight, and prohibiting research – especially in human nutrition – where objectives can easily be met without using animals. Further, Baker called for the support of efforts already underway at NIH and other federal agencies to accelerate human-based research and testing.   

For an interview with Baker or a copy of her written testimony to the Subcommittee, please contact Kim Kilbride at 202-717-8665 or kkilbride [at] pcrm.org (kkilbride[at]pcrm[dot]org).