Why This Matters: The American Medical Association (AMA) isn’t a neutral voice for medicine — it’s a powerful lobby that has spent more than a century defending animal experimentation and blocking ethical progress in science. Understanding its role helps us see how entrenched industries manipulate public trust and slow innovation that could save both human and animal lives.

Recently, the American Medical Association (AMA) — “the largest professional association for physicians” — made headlines for publicly criticizing actions by the Trump administration that diverge from its organizational policies. 

And, when the AMA talks, many stop to listen — just not closely enough.

The AMA wants to be seen as “the face of organized, scientific medicine….” and a champion for “the betterment of public health.”

Only, it’s neither.

The AMA has long served as a well-oiled mouthpiece for corporate power, political influence, and — yes — animal exploitation.

From its founding to the present day, the AMA has consistently aligned itself with entrenched power -– corporate, institutional, and political -– even when doing so has undermined ethical science, public health, and social equity. And, its history includes a decades-long and vigorous defense of animal experimentation.

The AMA hasn’t simply supported animal research. It has helped build and protect the very system we’re fighting to dismantle.

The AMA has been described as a “major player in debates about vivisection” since at least the 1900s. Its actions — from aggressive lobbying to public relations campaigns to reliance on propaganda -– have been characterized as “critical” in preventing the passage of animal research restrictions at the local, state, and national levels.

In the 1960s, the AMA formed a Task Force on Laboratory Animal Care — not to strengthen protections for animals in labs but to persuade Congress that no such protections were necessary.

In 1989, a leaked internal strategy laid out the AMA’s deliberate effort to reshape public discourse: shift the language from “Animals In Research” to “Advancing Biomedical Research” — an attempt to erase animals from the debate, center the profiteers, and reframe animal advocates as “anti-science.” 

More recently, the AMA has been working to “‘parry those scientists who speak out against animal experimentation’” — including physicians within its own ranks. 

These are not isolated actions. They reflect a lasting, institutional campaign to normalize, obscure, and retain as entrenched animal exploitation and suffering.

The AMA has long recognized that the debate around animal research has “‘implications beyond animal welfare’” — including for how society makes ethical choices, how science is conducted, and how humans see themselves in relation to other beings — and  it has sought to control that narrative.

The AMA has advanced the view that U.S. physicians should be regarded as having “morality . . . beyond reproach”, and that man is “‘the overlord of the animals and may use them for his pleasure and profit, even to the point of robbing them of life.’” In fact, it is largely through its advocacy around vivisection that the AMA has worked to “bring the public and policy makers on its journey to change the face of medicine with some degree of moral authority.” 

That effort continues today. The AMA’s CEO recently described the organization — which claims to be “‘actively engaging with the administration, lawmakers, and key stakeholders across medicine’” — as “‘the voice of medicine.’” 

And this makes one thing crystal clear:  “[a]lthough the language may have changed, “the general principles behind the AMA’s ethical support of vivisection have remained.”

The AMA continues to stand firmly behind animal experimentation, opposing anti-vivisection legislation, lobbying to maintain the U.S. government’s massive animal research budget, and partnering with leading industry front groups like NABR, FBR, AMP, and FASEB. (These groups have listed the AMA as a “well-known, trusted” advocate “for biomedical research in animals” — right alongside the NIH, the world’s largest funder of animal experimentation.)

The AMA’s extensive ties to industry and moneyed interests make its unwavering defense of animal research — and its broader policy positions, including its alignment with exploitative power structures that extend beyond nonhuman animals — part of its organizational DNA.

The AMA has been described as “keen to maintain proximity to power and authority’” and as part of the “biomedical industrial complex” known to have “pharma-wires protruding from its back.” 

Moreover, commentators have rightly described the AMA’s role in “the history of health care in America” as “nefarious.” Its record includes:

• Formal opposition to civil rights interventions in healthcare. The AMA resisted desegregation efforts in hospitals until 1965, when the passage of Medicare required the desegregation of hospitals that accepted federal funds.
• Staunch resistance to universal health coverage and Medicare, prioritizing physician autonomy and fee-for-service products over improved and more equitable patient access and outcomes.
• Acceptance of tobacco industry funding well into the 20th century, coupled with public downplaying of the risks of smoking, even as scientific evidence of harm mounted.
• Sale of its seal of approval to private industry in exchange for royalties. 

The pattern is plain: time and time again, the AMA has used its influence to protect its own power, advance private industry’s interests, and block reforms that challenge the status quo — no matter how unethical and no matter how harmful to the public.

Exactly what it’s doing today with regard to animal experimentation. 

By resisting the development and implementation of non-animal methods — methods that are both more ethical and more predictive of human outcomes — the AMA slows innovation, diverts resources, and perpetuates bad science (all in fundamental contradiction of its stated mission). 

It hurts all of us except its own members — the “plethora” of whom “depend, directly or indirectly, on animal experimentation for their very existence.”

So, far from the neutral advocate for science and public health that it claims to be, the AMA is really a politically connected trade group that has spent well over a century promoting and defending exploitation — of animals, of humans, and of the public trust.

When the AMA talks, we must listen — and closely. 

When we do, the truth is loud: the AMA is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the animal research industry — and what it says hurts us all.

Your Call to Action: Take action now by supporting the Safeguard Pets, Animals, and Research Ethics (SPARE) Act. By stripping away the federal funding stream that fuels animal experimentation, the SPARE Act directly undermines the AMA’s decades-long campaign to preserve this exploitative system and to “‘prioritize[] lobbying for increased physician payments from government programs.’”

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