Animal rights advocates are ready for Trump’s war on science

Democrats and Republicans generally don’t agree about science. The vast majority of Democrats believe climate change is a major threat, for example, while less than a quarter of Republicans say the same. But people across the political spectrum agree on animal testing. Or, more accurately, no one knows what to think: About half of each party supports the use of animals in scientific research, while the other half opposes it. Increasingly, everyone from crunchy moms to right-wing tech bros also agrees that we should Make America Healthy Again. Distrust of health care systems, federal science agencies, and pharmaceutical companies crosses party lines and runs deep. Acting on this distrust, Trump 2.0 is promising to deprioritize research on infectious diseases and overhaul the nation’s science agencies. Trump has picked a handful of anti-establishment leaders such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya, who aim to slash federal science funding, for health positions in his administration. Given the widespread use of lab animals in biomedical research, animal testing could get caught “in the crosshairs” of these changes, Emily Trunnell, director of science advancement and outreach at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), told me. --- This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. --- Less federal science funding could, as a side effect, mean less animal testing. Animal advocates I spoke to welcome these potential changes. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, so the lives of millions of animals depend on what happens to it. In the long run, forcing scientists to shift away from animal models by drying up existing funding sources could not just benefit animals used in experiments, but also make science better. Replacing animals with human-centered tools will provide better insight into human biology, speeding up the development of much-needed treatments for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Trump’s war on science, however, has little to do with improving human or animal lives. He famously loves meat — especially if it’s well done — and, with a handful of exceptions, doesn’t seem concerned with animal welfare. In fact, his first term saw a significant drop in penalizing animal welfare violations. Rather, the Trump administration’s plans to defund animal testing while deregulating animal welfare are two sides of the same coin, and its attacks on science could worsen already-lax protections for lab animals and drive some scientists out of the field altogether. What did Trump 1.0 mean for lab animals? Looking back at Trump’s first four years gives us some sense of what his next term could look like for animal experimentation. In 2019, Trump-appointed Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler announced ambitious plans to cut the number of EPA-funded mammal studies by 30 percent by 2025, and to completely eliminate them by 2035. The initiative, lauded by animal rights groups alongside Trump loyalists like former Rep. Matt Gaetz, awarded grants to research teams developing human-based methods that can replace animals in studies of environmental toxins. Then, just two years later, President Joe Biden’s EPA quietly removed that self-imposed timeline from a report on the plan to develop non-animal-based technologies, and have since abandoned the 2035 deadline altogether. The Biden administration loosened the plan in response to concerned environmentalists and scientists, who feared that new methods weren’t ready to replace animals in tests that determine whether potentially dangerous chemicals get cleared for use in consumer products. Meanwhile, during the first Trump administration, White Coat Waste, a bipartisan anti-animal testing nonprofit, gained traction by harnessing the tension between left-leaning researchers and anti-establishment conservatives that had been growing during the Covid pandemic. Their strategy: appeal to conservatives by framing animal testing as a waste of taxpayer money, while still engaging more liberal activists motivated by compassion for animals. It’s proven to be remarkably effective, and they’ve successfully shut down over 114 labs and experiments, including the FDA’s largest primate lab. “Based on our success with the first Trump administration, we’re very excited to make even more progress under Trump 2.0,” Justin Goodman, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy at White Coat Waste, told me. While some lab animals benefitted from the shutdowns, the vast majority did not. Enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, which sets basic standards for the treatment and housing of certain lab and farm animals, fell sharply during Trump’s first term as federal officers were reportedly directed to emphasize education for violators rather than enforcement, allowing animal suffering to go largely unchecked. Just two weeks after Trump’s first inauguration, the USDA suddenly deleted inspection reports and records of enforcement actions against violators of the Animal Welfare Act — crucial documents for journalists and animal welfare advocates. While the reports were restored three years later in response to pressure from lawmakers and animal welfare groups, their removal serves as a powerful reminder that unchecked abuse is a common side effect of deregulation. Trump 2.0 poses a double-edged sword for lab animals Still, groups like White Coat Waste believe they can convince the Trump administration to get animals out of labs, and aren’t concerned that their agenda is also supported by, say, pharmaceutical corporations that want a fast track to market approval, or hardline MAGA science skeptics. In the world of lab animal welfare, the converging interests of progressive animal rights activists and conservative government skeptics make policy reform possible. Across the political spectrum, the goal is the same: get animals out of labs. Organizations like White Coat Waste are embracing it. “I’m not particularly concerned with why people oppose animal testing or want to cut it,” Goodman told me. “I’m just concerned that it will happen at all.” From this perspective, whether Trump truly cares about animals or not is irrelevant, as long as he commits to defunding and deregulating science. “That’s where the interests of animal advocates and the incoming administration align,” said Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. “They both care about excessive government spending on animal experimentation.” Some of Trump’s appointees — including nominated heads of the NIH and the FDA, Bhattacharya and Marty Makary, respectively — have spoken out against animal testing, with Bhattacharya calling White Coat Waste “absolute heroes.” RFK Jr., chosen to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has a strange relationship with animals that includes leaving a dead bear in Central Park for laughs and keeping a pet emu. Regardless, his track record of confronting bastions of biomedical research makes animal advocates hopeful. “We are extremely excited that an administration that is skeptical of science and also skeptical of federal spending is coming into power,” Goodman said. Winders is also optimistic that cutting funding for animal experimentation will save animal lives in the long run. Without grant money from federal funding agencies, scientists who currently rely on animal methods will be forced to figure something else out. Optimistically, this could give the biomedical research industry a much-needed kick in the pants to innovate human-centered replacements for animal models. Scientists are unlikely to change their tried-and-true research methods unless there’s an exceptionally strong incentive like sweeping shifts in government funding — the pull of inertia, and the fear of invalidating their existing body of work, are too powerful. This week, White Coat Waste published a Trump 2.0 wish list, asking the new administration to defund dog and cat experiments, cut off NIH-funded labs in China, phase animal testing out of the EPA, and axe the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose funded projects include gain-of-function experiments on animals, entirely. The plan, they hope, “would cut billions in wasteful government spending annually and Make America Greater for Animals.” With support from key Trump allies, their wishes could be granted. But there will likely be consequences. Cutting federal support for biomedical research could trigger a mass exodus from academic science, a kind of domestic brain drain that could hinder the development of new drugs and vaccines for a generation. And because neither Trump’s administration nor White Coat Waste targets private corporations, scientists who move from universities to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies will likely be able to continue experimenting on animals there. While some private companies receive federal grants for projects involving lab animals, they’re often more lightly monitored than academic and government labs. And in the short term, while defunded research groups wrap up their existing projects, the mistreatment of lab animals could actually increase if the Trump administration continues its past pattern of lax enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act. While research facilities currently face only minor fines — or just a slap on the wrist — for animal welfare violations, Winders fears that Trump’s Justice Department could eliminate even these minor penalties, leaving labs with no consequences for mistreating animals. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Winders said. Her concern is that, under Trump 2.0, the Department of Justice will gut this authority, announcing that agencies will no longer be able to assess civil penalties on their own. This “would effectively mean that research facilities could violate the Animal Welfare Act with total license, without any fear of repercussions.” What about the scientists? Over the last month, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a proposed advisory organization led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has taken to X to memeify absurd-sounding science studies: $1,513,299 to analyze motion sickness in kittens, or $419,470 to see whether lonely rats use cocaine more than happy rats. Musk and his allies point to these studies as examples of wasted taxpayer dollars, and it’s not wrong to claim that the federal government funds some relatively low-impact studies that harm animals — they do. But Stuart Buck, the executive director of the Good Science Project, fears that tearing apart experiments for not having direct real-world applications risks devaluing the entire scientific enterprise. “There are so many cases in science,” he told me, “where truly groundbreaking discoveries were not appreciated at the time, or they went unfunded, or people thought they were kind of ridiculous.” Ozempic, for example, would not exist today unless some scientists shot Gila monster venom into guinea pig cells 40-odd years ago. In fact, Buck thinks, “we need more frivolous studies.” To be clear: Whatever Trump’s ambitions, no one is going to announce that all animal research is banned, unlock cage doors at the NIH, and set all the monkeys free. If biomedical research funding is scaled back, change will come slowly. Scientists will be able to finish projects funded by existing grants — but might not be able to apply for new ones. If done carefully, this could be good for both animals and science. There’s a genuine need to incentivize a transition to better methods where animal models are currently falling short. PETA’s latest research modernization plan, for example, which will be published later this month, proposes specifically ending animal use in research areas where evidence suggests animals are poor models of human biology — like psychiatric conditions and inflammatory disease — and doing more research to see whether animals can be effectively replaced elsewhere. Americans, including scientists, overwhelmingly agree that we should phase out animal experiments. Animals shouldn’t have to die to save human lives. But forcing this change through defunding and deregulation, rather than careful scientific advancement, risks creating a system where both human and animal welfare lose out.

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Animal rights advocates are ready for Trump’s war on science