Last week, Americans for Medical Progress (AMP) — a trade group bankrolled by the animal research industry — proudly announced it had written a letter to the NIH. 

AMP wants you to believe that it’s a credible voice in scientific debate. It’s not.

AMP is neither a neutral party nor a scientific authority. It’s a propaganda machine that was founded in 1991 by U.S. Surgical — a company then under fire for using dogs to test and practice on with surgical staplers — for a singular purpose: to protect the animal research industry from the animal rights movement.

From day one, AMP has been funded and led by the industry it serves — pharmaceutical giants, biotech firms, medical institutions, research universities, and laboratory animal suppliers. It has partnered with other industry shills like NABR. And, it has been directed by individuals with deep, vested interests in animal experimentation — to wit, AMP’s 2025 Board is chaired by Dr. Gina Wilkerson, a veterinarian employed by GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) Pharmaceuticals, and is composed of executives from Inotiv, Oregon Health and Science University, AbbVie, Incyte, Transnetyx, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, and other large animal researching entities and universities.

As even advertising experts have identified, AMP is the literal textbook example of a company that campaigns “in [its] own interest while hiding behind fictitious foundations” — of a “public relations front for corporations to campaign for causes that benefit them.” 

AMP has never stood for scientific progress — only for protecting profits. (Hence, the nickname “Americans for Medical Profits”.) And now, with those profits under threat, AMP is doing just what it does: trying to sell us and the powers that be a lie.

In its latest letter to the NIH (which follows submissions like this one, asking the NIH to continue prioritizing animal research over ethical and scientifically superior methodologies, and this one, supporting the Department of Defense’s continued torture and killing of dogs and cats), AMP dresses up animal experimentation as modern, collaborative, and essential — feigning support for innovation while demanding that violence remain the norm, and cloaking regressive demands in the language of reform.

Here’s what AMP really told the NIH — and why it’s a problem:

1.  “Yes to Non-Animal Methods . . . But Not Really.”
AMP opens by pretending to support non-animal research methods; yet, within sentences, it reveals its real agenda:  animal research must, at a minimum, continue “in tandem” with human-relevant methods (i.e., animal experimentation must stay center stage). This is a classive bait-and-switch — using progressive rhetoric to prop up a regressive system — and makes crystal clear that AMP isn’t interested in displacing animal research, only repackaging it as times change.

2.  “Bad Data Is Fine If It Protects Us.”
AMP demands that non-animal methods be validated against animal research data — data it admits reflects “the reproducibility and translational challenges the biomedical research community has faced for years”. This is nothing less than scientific sabotage in disguise: because animal data rarely translates to human outcomes, requiring human-specific data to “match” it means that better science gets shelved. Meanwhile, funding is siphoned back into vivisection — where AMP’s interest lies. For AMP, this isn’t about integrity — it’s about engineering failure to preserve control.

3.   “Let the Vivisectors Lead Reform.”
AMP wants NIH to base policies on input from “stakeholders”. This sounds fine, until you realize that AMP defines “stakeholders” as animal researchers and their allies – in other words, the very people who built and benefit from the system intended for review. This isn’t a recipe for reform — it’s a plan to derail it. 

4.  “Diversity is Dangerous.”
AMP opposes NIH’s plan to diversify peer review panels (because, right now, those panels are dominated by animal researchers and their supporters). AMP warns that reviewers with “advocacy-driven agendas” might sneak in and undermine the process. But, the current process is the agenda — one shaped by people whose careers depend on maintaining the status quo. Clearly, AMP doesn’t fear bias; it fears balance, and it fears losing its monopoly on what counts as “science”.

5.  “Deceive the Public. Disclose Less.”
AMP wants the NIH to spend more money promoting the public’s “accurate understanding” of animal research — only there’s nothing accurate about AMP’s propagandist claims, just like its insulin-related lies we recently exposed. At the very same time, AMP argues against disclosing how much taxpayer money is spent on animal- versus non-animal research. This isn’t about education — it’s about control. AMP wants to spoon-feed the public its propaganda, while hiding the receipts.

AMP’s letter isn’t about a legitimate policy proposal. It’s a PR move rooted in self-preservation.

AMP is trying to hold on to power by manipulating public trust, rebranding exploitation as ethics, and framing inertia as innovation.

Because AMP knows what’s at stake.

If the NIH chooses truth over tradition, transparency over secrecy, and ethics over exploitation, then AMP — and the empire it props up and defends — will begin to fall.

Let’s make sure it does. 

Your Call to Action: Use your voice to help animals in labs now. Urge your U.S. elected officials to support the SPARE Act. If the SPARE Act is passed into law, it will prohibit biomedical, cosmetic, toxicity, and psychological testing on animals in federally-funded labs and mandate a three-year phase-out of existing animal experiments.

Support the SPARE Act

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