Animal research is irreplaceable

I spent my entire research career working on animals. In this case, the animals were Drosophila melanogaster, or “fruit flies.” I dissected tens of thousands of larval salivary glands because their giant polytene chromosomes afforded a relatively high resolution map of the genome. I made over 100 transgenic lines to gain insight into gene function. I screened tens of thousands of flies in mutagenesis screens to identify mutations that answered questions about genetics. And of course, much of my research rested on a literature of science using flies.

Now I understand that some folks consider flies to be vermin. Their status as invertebrates places them beneath the notice of the NIH rules on animal care. But much of our lifesaving vaccines, drugs, devices and surgical techniques relied on research using vertebrate models, rodents and primates in particular.

Yes, I know we’ve cured cancer in mice hundreds of times in ways that didn’t translate to cancer in humans. But I wouldn’t take a vaccine or drug or accept a transplant or surgical procedure that hadn’t first been tested in appropriate animal models, nor would I want my loved ones to have to. YMMV.

While great strides have been made in computational modeling and organoid research, I cannot foresee a time when whole animal research/testing will be dispensable. So RFK Jr’s push to abandon non-human primate research is deeply dangerous.

“While less reliance on animal testing can be a good thing, we’re particularly alarmed by Secretary Kennedy’s fixation on non-human primates because it reflects a broader pattern in the Trump administration: hostility toward infectious-disease research. But non-human primates are essential to advances in this field. While alternative models are valuable for specific mechanistic questions, non-human primates are uniquely capable of modeling the full immunologic and clinical course of HIV infection, for example. Non-human primates have also been essential to studying diseases like Zika, Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, and many others. Without these studies, many of the most consequential advances in antiretroviral therapy, immune modulation, and cure-directed strategies likely would not exist.

“Those advances did not happen by chance, nor did they emerge from so-called “high-tech methods” alone. They are the product of decades of federally funded primate research that established the biological rules that make it possible to move complex, high-risk interventions into human trials without repeating historical disasters. To dismiss this work as expendable is to erase the evidence that has led to functional cure strategies and life-saving treatments. Weakening that foundation does not make the country healthier or more ethical; it makes it more vulnerable.”

If RFK Jr’s benighted policies come to pass in the US, it will result in offshoring that research to more enlightened countries. But the pace of discovery of life-saving therapies will slow and American preeminence in biomedical research will slip even further than it already has.

RFK Jr wants to ban primate research