Victory! This alert and the next one and the final one made a huge difference for animals! the final oneLearn more. here.

Testing on animals to produce drugs is cruel, outdated, and wasteful. A new bill has been introduced to spare vulnerable animals from agonizing experiments in laboratories while encouraging the use of modern, human-relevant studies. Please urge your representative to support the FDA Modernization Act of 2021 to save animals and transform the pharmaceutical industry for good!

Terrified animals, including mice, rats, rabbits, cats, dogs, and monkeys, are subjected to agonizing tests in laboratories to develop drugs. These tests involve exposing animals to new drug formulations including all of the ingredients used, to observe the results over both short and long-term studies. Animals may experience cancer, reproductive harm, birth defects, internal and external bleeding, muscle cramps, digestive problems, paralysis, and more.

However, it has long been known that these studies yield unreliable results that do not indicate potential hazards to human health. The physiology of humans differs from that of other animals, and results can vary widely between various species. The way an animal responds to a chemical does not indicate what the human response will be. If a chemical is determined to be safe for a specific kind of animal, it does not automatically mean it is safe for humans.

Over 90% of drugs that are deemed safe and effective in animal studies fail in human clinical trials. The National Institutes of Health wastes $12 billion every year on research that does not lead to the development of new treatments for humans while killing millions of animals in the process.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act dates all the way back to 1938 and requires that all drugs are tested on animals. However, there have been tremendous advancements in science and technology over the past 80 years. Bill H.R. 2565 aims to “amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to allow manufacturers and sponsors of a drug to use alternative testing methods to animal testing to investigate the safety and effectiveness of a drug, and for other purposes.”

Under this bill, animal-testing requirements for the development of drugs will no longer be required. Cell-based assays, organ-on-a-chip technology, computer models, and other human biology-based test methods would be allowed. Simply put, the FDA Modernization Act of 2021 would allow drug manufacturers to opt-out of animal testing while utilizing modern testing methods to develop drugs.

Unfortunately, animal tests would still be allowed under this bill but drug manufacturers would have the ability to choose modern, animal-free tests instead. This is a giant step in the right direction in ending testing on animals altogether. If this bill passes, we will campaign against drug manufacturers to urge them to do the right thing by choosing animal-free testing methods.

Victory! This alert and the next one and the final one made a huge difference for animals! the final oneLearn more. here.