Reject $30 Million for Nonhuman Primate Research

As the House and Senate Appropriations Committees work to finalize the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bills, I strongly urge the removal of two provisions currently included in the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies ("Labor-HHS") legislation: (1) $30 million in National Institutes of Health ("NIH") funding allocated for nonhuman primate research infrastructure at the National Primate Research Centers and (2) report language aimed at bolstering nonhuman primate research "resources". These provisions perpetuate an unethical and ineffectual research paradigm reliant on unvalidated animal-based data, which has been shown for decades to predict neither human safety nor human efficacy. Instead, federal funding should be invested in ethical,  translatable, and reliable human-biology-based research and testing methodologies that do not exploit other-than-human animals.

Continued (much less increased) funding of animal – including nonhuman primate – experimentation serves only to protect short-sighted and self-serving human interests in financial and occupational surety. Moreover, it flies in the face of Congress' and the NIH's own recognitions (through passage of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 and the Request for Information about New Approach Methodologies, respectively) that human health interests demand the elevation of, investment in, and, ultimately, reliance upon human-relevant research strategies. 

It must be noted that, with regard to the NIH, the contemplated allocation is particularly troubling. Indeed, the NIH – as founder and primary funder of the National Primate Research Centers – would benefit directly from the contemplated, animal-research-specific funding increase at the same time that it continues to cite a lack of resources as a hindrance to the development of non-animal New Approach Methodologies. Further, the NIH itself sponsored the very report upon which this allocation is assuredly premised: the 2023 National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine ("NASEM") report, which predicated its conclusion (that the U.S. should increase both its breeding of and experimentation on nonhuman primates) on input from the National Primate Research Centers (i.e., the NIH), as well as institutions and individuals directly involved with (and, therefore, professionally biased toward and invested in the pursuit of) nonhuman primate research.

The U.S. animal research industry will continue to perpetuate itself as long as the government so permits and – via allocations like that at issue here – so rewards. I request that, in genuine protection and furtherance of the interests of humans and other-than-humans alike, the Committees remove both the $30 million funding allocation for National Primate Research Centers and the report language on "Research with Non-Human Primates" in Fiscal Year 2024  Labor-HHS appropriations. 

With gratitude for your attention to this matter, and with an eye toward a brighter future for all.