Trump's science agencies find animal-rights allies amid media attacks, but one remains dogged foe

As the Food and Drug Administration endures sloppy journalism in the service of driving out officials who undermine pharma's grip on the long-captured agency, and volleys from pro-life activists who want to speed up its safety review of an abortion pill, the FDA is getting surprising support from a constituency even further left than the typical science journalist.

Animal rights and welfare groups, newly recognized in the media for years of bridge-building to Republican lawmakers, praised FDA Commissioner Marty Makary for publishing long-awaited draft guidance last week on moving away from animal testing and toward "new approach methodologies" for drug development.

While "animal toxicity studies" have been "critical" in the past, "finding ways to improve human relevance while reducing the use of animals by developing reliable NAMs furthers an important Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) priority to move away from reliance on animal testing," the draft states. The public can submit comments until May 18.

Animal testing "has a poor track record of predicting safety and efficacy in humans,” Makary said upon the guidance's March 18 release, which followed nearly a year after the agency released its "roadmap" on reducing animal testing in preclinical safety studies in favor of NAMs such as "organ-on-a-chip systems, computational modeling, and advanced in vitro assays."

Several "validated NAMs" are already "outperforming unvalidated animal models in predicting human responses to drugs," the agency said. These can "more reliably, efficiently and ethically predict human drug reactions prior to clinical trials,” said acting CDER Director Tracy Beth Hoeg. The Associated Press recently published a story that stated, without attribution, that her hiring a researcher with whom she was friendly as a senior policy adviser poses a potential conflict of interest. 

The Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action, sibling 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) nonprofits, praised Makary's leadership for "clearly signaling that the future lies in modern, human-relevant science – and that transition is already underway."

It noted the FDA explicitly cited the three-year-old bipartisan FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which removed longstanding statutory animal testing mandates but went neglected by the Biden administration, "signaling that sponsors can – and should – leverage scientifically valid non-animal methods" instead.

Reception from Trump administration is 'night and day' compared to previous

The National Institutes of Health announced the same day it was investing $150 million to "develop and scale research methods that better simulate human biology and reduce reliance on animal models," marking the first awards under the Complement Animal Research in Experimentation program.

"This progress comes after PETA scientists presented evidence to NIH on the need to support human-relevant methods in cardiovascular, gynecological, rare disease, and neurological research," which thus far is "failing to yield treatments for humans," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said soon after the guidance was published. 

PETA thanked NIH, FDA and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "for their leadership in moving the nation’s health agencies away from caging, poisoning, harming, and killing animals in experiments that have failed patients."

Politico documented PETA's bromance with Kennedy this month as an example of how the Make America Healthy Again pioneer "has shaken up traditional political allegiances." The reception it has received from the Trump administration is "night and day compared to previous" GOP and Democratic administrations, said PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. 

The group declared "massive news" to Just the News last month about Oregon Health and Science University agreeing to negotiate with NIH, its primary funder, to transition its Oregon National Primate Research Center into a sanctuary, ending gruesome experiments such as "repeatedly, painfully electro-ejaculat[ing] male monkeys."

The monkey research center has been a target of PETA pressure campaigns, undercover investigations and lobbying for 20 years, but it credited teaming up with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine with getting the transition across the goal line. 

Biting the hand that funded new gruesome research

The following week, The New York Times profiled the GOP-oriented White Coat Waste Project, which rose to influence by demonizing then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci for funding research that supercharged viruses, tormented pets and primates, and grafted aborted human tissue on rodents.

"To the chagrin of biomedical scientists who say animal research is essential for human health, the Trump administration is listening," reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote, using the media narrative that the administration's science agencies by default undermine public health.

The NIH transition away from nonhuman primate research is "rattling scientists who say such research has been responsible for advances in stroke and spinal cord injuries," she reported, quoting a "blindsided" former OHSU primate center director whose current NIH-supported study with rhesus macaques "could cure H.I.V. in babies."

Stolberg also put scare quotes around WCW's description of "transgender" mice experiments, whose funding was ended by the Department of Government Efficiency largely based on WCW investigations. The intended beneficiary was women who take hormones to resemble men, whom Stolberg described without quotes as transgender men, an ideological term.

WCW has not been shy about biting the federal hand that feeds its policy goals when they diverge and even mocking "establishment animal rights groups [for] acting as the PR arm" of NIH for its relatively paltry funding of "unproven" NAMs.

WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman testified last week before the Senate Small Business Committee against the Trump administration's ongoing funding of other animal research, including $126 million in "new taxpayer funding for barbaric experiments on dogs and cats" since Kennedy took over HHS and a new "Kittengate" expose.

MAHA supporters launched an old-fashioned phone storm of HHS when WCW gave out Kennedy's office line, prompting one automated voicemail message to change to "Thank you for calling Domino's Pizza, can you please hold? Thank you."

Goodman played the full message for Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst outside the hearing. "That's not OK. Actually makes my stomach turn," she said. HHS blamed an "unauthorized action by a rogue employee."