Latest news with #animaltesting
Fox News
3 days ago
- General
- Fox News
Secretary of the Navy ENDS Animal Testing!
I'm a conservative AND an animal lover so this announcement from the Secretary of the Navy really makes me smile! I'm Tomi Lahren, find out next. Animal testing is cruel, abusive and with new technology, also increasingly UNNECESSARY! That's why I am so happy to hear the announcement from the Secretary of the Navy that ALL testing on cats and dogs will be TERMINATED! The Secretary's proclamation also rightfully stated that not only is this practice inhumane, it's a WASTE of taxpayer dollars. He also thanked Secretary Hegseth and DOGE for bringing it to light. But this goes even further, the surgeon general of the Navy will also conduct a review of all medical research programs to ensure they align with ethical guidelines. DOGE has also had a hand in ending ridiculous trans experiments conducted by the NIH on various animals. This is a big deal and one I hope even Trump and conservative-hating liberals can get behind. I can't think of a better savings for taxpayers than ENDING the cruel and unethical treatment of defenseless animals! I'm Tomi Lahren and you watch my show 'Tomi Lahren is Fearless' at Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
Fox News
4 days ago
- General
- Fox News
Navy halts dog and cat experiments after PETA writes Hegseth about US taxpayer-funded animal tests
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) penned a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan Thursday, thanking the Trump administration for its ban on Navy-funded dog and cat experiments announced this week and requesting a broader ban on all animal testing in all military branches. Phelan on Tuesday terminated all Department of the Navy testing on cats and dogs, saving taxpayer dollars and ending these inhumane studies. "This is long overdue," Phelan said in a video posted to X. "In addition to this termination, I'm directing the surgeon general of the Navy to conduct a comprehensive review of all medical research programs to ensure they align with ethical guidelines, scientific necessity, and our core values of integrity and readiness." PETA on Thursday further urged the Department of Defense to conduct a similar comprehensive, agency-wide audit aimed at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in cruel and outdated animal experimentation. Specifically, the international organization requested the Department of Defense (DOD) ban the use of animals in Navy decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests and prohibit the use of dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, marine animals and other animals currently permitted in Army weapon-wounding tests. The weapon-wounding tests, which were banned during the Reagan administration, were reintroduced in 2020 when the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) issued a policy allowing for the purchase of "dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, or marine mammals to inflict wounds upon using a weapon for the purpose of conducting medical research, development, testing, or evaluation." The Army in 2023, with encouragement from PETA, cut $750,000 in taxpayer funding for a brain-damaging weapon-wounding experiment on ferrets at Wayne State University in Michigan. While reviewing other branches, PETA obtained public records showing decompression sickness experiments at the Naval Medical Research Command sliced open baby pigs, implanted devices and locked them in high-pressure chambers for up to eight days before killing them. Researchers are also accused of administering a drug to a pig and inducing a severe escalation in body temperature and muscle contractions before killing the animal. Officials said potentially faulty sedatives may have prolonged the pig's suffering. In another incident, a rat suffocated to death after an equipment malfunction, and the researcher failed to report the incident for 23 days, according to PETA. The organization alleged the Navy has wasted more than $5.1 million in federal funding since 2020 for decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests on thousands of animals at Duke University, the University of Maryland in Baltimore, the University of California in San Diego and the University of South Florida. "Pigs, rats and other animals feel pain and fear just as dogs and cats do, and their torment in gruesome military experiments must end," PETA Vice President Shalin Gala wrote in a statement. "PETA appreciates the Trump administration's decision to stop the Navy's torture tests on dogs and cats, and we urge a broader ban across the Pentagon to end the use of animals in Navy-funded decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests, Army-funded weapon-wounding tests and DOD-funded foreign experiments." PETA also requested in the letter that Defense Department officials prohibit funding of tests on animals at foreign institutions. In one experiment in Canada, which is receiving $429,347 in DOD funding, a University of Alberta experimenter is using dogs as "models" of a muscle wasting disease. In another ongoing DOD-funded foreign experiment in Australia, which is receiving $599,984, a James Cook University researcher is burning 30% of rats' body surface with scalding water and into their livers, inflicting an "[u]ncontrolled hemorrhage." The Department of Defense, Secretary of the Navy's office and Navy Office of Information did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
CBS News
7 days ago
- Health
- CBS News
Colorado woman advocates for animal testing reform after rescuing four test dogs
In April, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 85 into law, which requires health-related research facilities to put test dogs and cats up for adoption before euthanizing them when they're done with their work. Colorado has several animal testing sites, including university research, government labs and commercial testing. It's common practice to often euthanize the animals when the tests are done with, according to Humane World for Animals. According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released earlier this month, an animal testing facility in Fort Collins, that operates under the name High Quality Research, was cited for 22 federal animal welfare violations. That included delayed veterinarian treatment and contaminated food that contained large amounts of fecal matter. While not all testing facilities are the same, one Colorado woman argues that our technological advancements are comprehensive enough to do away with human and animal testing and cites her personal experiences as to why. When Lisa Ochsner sets out for her daily walk with four beagles, there's never a dull moment. "It's pretty comical," said Ochsner. "They love their walks. Some would probably be frustrated that they're pulling, but to me, it's just like 'You can do whatever you want.'" It's safe to say the pups live a pretty good life in Colorado. You'd never know the abuse they endured at an out-of-state animal testing facility. That they don't know how to play with toys, and for a long time, were afraid of the treats they now love. "Treats are a good thing. Treats are happy. But to them, treats were used in such a way to, like, coax them to then be mistreated." Ochsner jumped at the opportunity to adopt the survivors through the Beagle Freedom Project, which according to their website, is "the world's leading organization for rescuing and rehoming animals used in experimental research." "With the beagles that we rescued; they were completely emaciated. You can see every single part of their bones. Two of the beagles that we have, they couldn't walk because they were so weak. They took weeks and weeks of time to get the smell of feces and urine off of them. It was clear that they were not handled in a kind manner, and you couldn't even move right or left without them flinching because they were scared of just movement of humans. To me, that is an indication of abuse." With a background in clinical research, Ochsner is aware of the inhumane conditions these animals are often subject to, often in the name of cost-cutting. "My background has always been in research. That's what I've done since I graduated college." When asked if people would be shocked how prevalent animal testing is, she answered with a resounding "yes." "Anything that you see in your kitchen could be something that has been tested on an animal, to the really critical drugs that people use for cancer, for Alzheimer's research. Cosmetics, things that we put on our skin, things that we put in our hair, in the food that's eaten." Ochsner is not only advocating for higher standards but also argues companies should be moving away from human and animal testing and leaning into the use of artificial intelligence instead. "AI sometimes gets a bad rap. But if you think of the positive things that it can do in terms of data mining and looking at retrospective data to see, you know, what has been safe with what we already know, and being able to apply that information forward, so that way, we don't have to run new tests over and over again, on things like animals and even humans." She realizes change won't be made overnight, but for her, each small step in that direction, is a meaningful one. "This is not something that we can just stop here at this point, I think there's so much more that can be done. I love that they're requiring the adoption. Anybody that has any reservations about adopting dogs? Try it. It's life changing. It is so purposeful to be able to give another opportunity and a second chance, which I think everybody deserves, animal or human."
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Opinion - The NIH delivers a major victory for animal ethics in science
The National Institutes of Health recently announced a landmark initiative to expand human-based science while reducing animal use. The world's largest funder of biomedical and public health research will now prioritize innovative health research, leaving outdated animal experiments behind. The announcement highlights the scientific limitations of translating findings from animals to humans. Paired with growing crises of illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer and heart disease, these limitations stagnate medical advances. NIH investment in research to better understand and treat disease is crucial for improving the health of Americans. As Director Jay Bhattacharya points out, by expanding human-based research, this initiative will usher in a new era of innovation, improve health care outcomes and deliver life-changing treatments. Methods like tissue chips, organoids and bioprinting are already being used to replace animals and improve clinical translation, including in disease modeling, precision medicine and regulatory toxicology. These methods use human cells, tissue and data to replicate human-specific biology and disease traits and have enormous potential to revolutionize medical research and testing. A 2022 economic analysis estimated that the use of more predictive, preclinical non-animal technologies instead of animal tests could generate over $24 billion in increased research productivity, resulting in streamlined drug development and potential cost savings for patients. Indeed, this is the rationale for the Food and Drug Administration's new plan to phase out animal testing requirements for monoclonal antibodies and other drugs. Historically, billions of dollars — as much as half of the NIH's budget for research — has been spent every year on animal experiments that do not translate well to human clinical outcomes. This research results in the harming and killing of millions of animals annually, diverts funds from more effective human-based approaches, delays medical breakthroughs that patients desperately need and puts clinical-trial participants at risk of adverse effects that were not detected in poorly predictive preclinical animal tests. The NIH will now take the necessary steps to overcome these barriers. The NIH has made steady progress toward the development and use of non-animal research approaches. In 2024, the agency accepted comprehensive recommendations on catalyzing non-animal approaches made by an advisory group. In conjunction, a new program called Complement-ARIE was launched that aimed to speed up the development, standardization, validation and use of such methods. The new announcement builds on this progress in a major way, establishing a new office to coordinate NIH-wide efforts to improve the use of non-animal approaches and committing to expand funding, training, and infrastructure for human-based science. The initiative also addresses review-related barriers to the broader use of non-animal methods. Our team leads an international collaboration aimed at characterizing and mitigating a phenomenon called animal methods bias, in which peer reviewers of grant applications or scientific studies prefer animal-based methods or lack the expertise necessary to adequately review non-animal methods. Consequently, researchers who use non-animal methods can receive unfair review comments, sometimes resulting in the rejection of funding or publishing submissions. The new NIH initiative will implement funding evaluation criteria to help improve review quality and ensure impartiality toward different methods. It will also provide bias mitigation training to review staff and integrate non-animal expertise in review groups. These are all measures our team has been advocating for. The initiative establishes another provision that will be crucial for public trust: public reporting of animal- and non-animal-based spending. Over the years, snapshots of the funding landscape have rarely been made available. In 2012, an NIH staff member estimated that 47 percent of NIH-funded grants had an animal research component. A 2016 blog post (removed but still available on the web archive) indicated that about 47 percent of extramural research project grants used mice and that mouse use was trending upward. A 2023 advisory committee presentation indicated an upward trend in NIH-funded research using non-animal alternatives, landing at about 8 percent in 2021. Regular, clear funding data will help the agency stay accountable to the initiative's goals. While an improvement over 10 or 20 years ago, NIH investment in non-animal alternatives still pales in comparison to its bankrolling of animal research. Much work remains to overcome the stronghold animal experiments have on biomedical research, upheld by centuries of tradition, the research animal trade and methods bias. Bhattacharya's announcement indicates the NIH is ready to tackle these crucial issues. Another recent agency announcement promotes the importance of supporting a diversity of ideas in science 'in the edge cases where scientists are pursuing evidence that others find inconvenient or objectionable.' Unraveling our reliance on animal experiments will require embracing fresh perspectives and disrupting the status quo, and the NIH is now prioritizing this work. The new initiative to prioritize human-based science is necessary, and it will have profound impacts on human health. Catharine E. Krebs, PhD, is a medical research program manager with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Elizabeth Baker, JD, is the director of research policy with the Physicians Committee. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
