About Us

Vivisection is the practice of cutting into, dissecting, or operating on a live animal in the name of science. This unnecessary torture suffering includes:

• infecting an animal with diseases, 
• administering drugs,
• poisoning, 
• burning skin, 
• causing brain damage, 
• implanting electrodes into an animal’s brain, 
• maiming, 
• blinding, and
• other painful and invasive procedures.

Many experiments also cause severe stress and suffering to animals, such as long-term social isolation, prolonged full-body restraint, painful electric shocks, withholding food, and separating infants from their mothers.

Most animals tortured in labs are ultimately killed and thrown away (and, sometimes, stuffed in body bags while they’re still alive).

No. Here’s the simple truth that the billion-dollar animal experimentation industry doesn’t want you to know: Experiments on nonhuman animals don’t save human lives.

Over 95% of drugs tested on animals fail in human trials. This means millions of caring, thinking, feeling beings are tortured and killed for nothing.

Relying on animal testing is not only cruel, it’s holding science back. Approximately 2 billion animals have been killed in U.S. research since 2000. This reliance on animal research to study human biology and diseases is slowing medical progress and hurting people too.

And just think of how many times we’ve cured cancer in mice. These treatments simply don’t work in humans. That’s why Rise for Animals’ advocacy for ethical and human-relevant research methods benefits all, at the expense of none.

As you read this, dogs like Gryffin are being cut open.

Cats like Cry Baby, Arthur and Sophie are being mistreated.

Monkeys like Loverboy are being tied down and tortured.

Millions of mice and rats, like Mama Girl, are being slaughtered.

You’d be shocked to know what animals are suffering right now in labs.

Nonhuman animals are not models for humans, hence we are not in need of “alternatives” – we are in need of replacements. In partnership with the brightest, most innovative minds, we are supporting the development and adoption of ethical, reliable, predictive, non-animal research and testing methodologies.

Rise for Animals played a key role in the founding of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, a groundbreaking organization leveraging technology and markets to replace animals in research and testing. 

Some existing non-animal, human-relevant methods:

• Non-invasive imaging technology such as MRIs and CAT scans
• Epidemiology (the study of human populations)
• Human clinical studies
• Human cell and tissue cultures
• Human organs-on-chips
• 3D-printed organelles
• Microdosing (in which humans are given very low quantities of a drug to test the effects on the body on the cellular level, without affecting the whole body system)
• Mathematical and computer-based databases and models
• Stem cell and genetic testing methods
• In vitro (test tube) techniques

Yes. Without doubt, we’re opposed to all experiments on nonhuman animals that are undertaken for purposes other than the direct benefit of those very animals. Our opposition is rooted in ethics, science, and economics.

Ethically, we reject speciesism (the belief that humans are superior to nonhuman animals), which underpins, empowers, and defends all manners of nonhuman animal use and exploitation, including experimentation. We believe that all animals are deserving of equal moral consideration and that no animals should be used as the means to others’ ends.”  / “Scientifically, we understand that nonhuman animals cannot serve as predictive, reliable models for humans. That is to say, the crisis in “translation” between nonhuman animal experiments and human application is fundamental to science’s exploitation of nonhuman animals and, therefore, insurmountable.” / Economically, we oppose the use of billions of taxpayer dollars to fund unethical and, plainly, “bad” science that commodifies nonhuman animals and harms both humans and nonhumans.

Rise for Animals builds on over 100 years of major victories we’ve achieved as a trailblazing organization called NEAVS or the New England Anti-Vivisection Society, founded in 1895.

Victories like ending the use of chimpanzees in U.S. research and shutting down our government’s kitten-killing experiments. 

Today, we are carrying forward the torch of generations of dedicated supporters like you who have come before us to achieve a bold new goal: end animal experimentation in our lifetime.

Turn your passion, resolve, and love for animals into action now by visiting our action center.