Congress is currently working on the federal government’s 2025 fiscal budget, and the Senate Appropriations Committee has included $30 million for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to renovate, expand, and build new infrastructure at its National Primate Research Centers. This support will expand primate breeding efforts and increase the use of primates in invasive research in the U.S., perpetuating a reliance on animal models that are unreliable and not applicable to human disease.
Please act TODAY to help prevent funding that will cause countless numbers of primates to suffer!
There’s added concern because, while the NIH asked for ‘only’ $10 million, the Senate Committee decided to allocate three times that amount, presumably bowing to pressure from animal research lobbying groups and ignoring the ethical, scientific, and economic concerns surrounding this flawed science. This move is misguided and irresponsible, especially considering that over 90 percent of new drugs tested on animals (including primates) fail in human clinical trials—a widely acknowledged statistic in the regulatory and biomedical research communities. Last year, nearly 108,000 primates were used in labs, with tens of thousands used in invasive experiments, according to data provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Instead, Congress should help reduce the reliance on animals in science by providing funding for the use and development of human-based models of disease that produce data that can be directly utilized to gain greater understanding of human biological systems and create new drug treatments. Primates have rich emotional and social lives, and they suffer greatly when confined and used in laboratory experiments.
Last year, after resolving differences between the Senate and House versions of the budget, the NIH’s funding request for primate research and breeding was omitted. This year, the House version of the spending bill specifically excludes this funding. Please contact your legislators TODAY and urge them to exclude funding from the 2025 federal budget that would increase primate breeding and research!
