Recently, FASEB — the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which claims to represent “110,000 biological and biomedical researchers” — submitted a letter to the NIH that pretends to support scientific innovation.
But, just like AMP’s letter to the NIH, the truth jumps off the page.
FASEB isn’t interested in improving science. It wants only to preserve its wealth and power by keeping the status quo alive, no matter how unethical, how unscientific, or how many lives it costs.
At first glance, the letter appears to applaud the NIH’s initiative to reduce animal use and expand New Approach Methodologies (NAMS). But read beyond the pleasantries, and FASEB’s real agenda becomes clear: keep animal experimentation entrenched, and keep “alternatives” at bay.
From the outset, FASEB frames NIH’s initiative as a potential restriction of animal research — positioning reform not as a scientific and ethical opportunity, but as a threat.
Fittingly, FASEB describes the exploitation and torture of animals as part of the “scientific toolkit”. This is a telling phrase — and a familiar one — because that’s exactly how the animal research industry sees and treats nonhuman animals: not as sentient beings, but as objects. As tools. As commodities for human use.
And, FASEB wants NAMS framed the same way — not as liberators of the victimized, but as convenient accessories to already existing violence. (Unfortunately, in discussing its recent announcement, the NIH used the term “toolbox”, as well.)
This is attempted co-optation — plain and simple. And, it’s exactly the strategy we warned about.
To make sure reform never gets too bold, FASEB urges the NIH to “especially” center the voices of researchers working at the “intersection of NAM development and animal model refinement.”
Translation: Let the very people who profit from animal research shape the plan to move away from it.
At every turn, FASEB works to shield the institution of animal experimentation, using self-interested distortions dressed up as scientific concern.
- It frames the potential “impact” of “restricting animal research” primarily in terms of what it might mean for researchers — not for public health, not for human patients, and certainly not for the animals who are being used and discarded in labs every day.
- It claims that animal research is defined by scientific “rigor” — when, really, the only “rigor” to which the industry can rightly lay claim is the “strictness, severity, or harshness” it reserves for its nonhuman victims.
- It asserts that animal research remains “the leading methodology” because of its “demonstrated translational potential”. Only science (and, frankly, the NIH’s own rationale for this new initiative) proves otherwise – spurring FASEB’s calculated attempt to confuse historical overuse with scientific merit.
These are the same sleights of the hand the animal research industry has been relying on for decades in its attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
FASEB also relies on one of the industry’s favorite tactics: highlighting the supposed “limitations” of NAMS while ignoring the well-documented limitations (and “translational challenges”) of animal experiments.
FASEB’s letter even singles out human diseases like Parkinson’s and MS as too “complex” for NAMS to address — without acknowledging that animals have been tortured in “research” for these exact diseases for decades without yielding any meaningful outcomes for the humans who suffer from them.
And, then, FASEB lays the industry’s favorite trap.
FASEB insists that NAMs must be “rigorously validated” before being used. That they must demonstrate “reproducibility, biological relevance, and translational utility” — the very standards that animal research has never met.
And even that is still not enough for FASEB, which also wants NAMs validated against animal data, a move designed to ensure NAMS’ failure. Because, when human-relevant methods are forced to match up with animal-based ones, the good human data often contradicts the bad nonhuman data.
It’s a game rigged by industry: demand that NAMS mimic broken benchmarks, then disqualify them when they don’t.
Still not done, FASEB goes on to argue that, even once validated, NAMS shouldn’t necessarily be used. Instead, FASEB calls on the NIH to develop strategies “to support the continued use of animal models” — strategies FASEB wants developed with its own input.
FASEB’s letter — just like AMP’s before it — is wrapped in the language of balance and compromise, without honoring either.
There is no “humane” way to torture a sentient being.
And there is nothing reasonable about demanding rigorous validation from methods meant to replace others that have never been validated at all.
This is industry propaganda, nothing more.
The animal research industry wants NAMS boxed in.
It wants “stakeholder engagement” to mean industry control.
It wants “modernization” without disruption — a future where nothing really changes at all.
Like AMP, FASEB knows what’s at stake. The rise of human-relevant science threatens the animal research industry’s (literal) death-grip on billions of federal dollars.
So, it’s fighting back — not with science (which is not on its side) and not with ethics (which it has never demonstrated), but with industry talking points, manipulations and deceptions, and sabotage disguised as stakeholder input.
(It’s no coincidence, of course, that FASEB is a member of AAALAC and that it proudly partners with AMP and NABR.)
The industry wants the NIH to say it’s modernizing science, while continuing with business as usual. It wants NAMS to be nothing but a fresh coat of pain on its bloodstained walls.
And, if we let industry voices define the narrative and write the rules, the industry will get its way.
Let us be clear that we are not fighting for a research system that merely “considers” New Approach Methodologies. We are fighting for one that demands and uses Non-Animal Methodologies.
And, even more fundamentally, we are fighting for a future in which nonhuman animals are not seen as tools in a human “toolkit” — but as individuals, with lives of their own, and a right to live them freely.
Your call to action: The U.S. is the world’s largest funder of animal research despite long knowing and even publicly acknowledging that the use of animals for research intended to benefit people is both misguided and ineffective. Urge your U.S. elected officials to support the SPARE Act, a bill that aims to end federally funded animal research.
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