PETITION TARGETS: Joe Biden, Congressional Leaders, and the Food and Drug Administration
UPDATE (12/27/2022): Congress has passed the FDA Modernization Act, and President Joe Biden has signed off! Thank you to everyone who signed our petition and spoke up for these innocent animals! —Lady Freethinker Staff
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Millions of animals are infected, poisoned, blinded, shocked, and tortured in experiments each year globally.
The majority of dogs, monkeys, mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, ferrets, and other animals suffer these agonizing procedures without the use of painkillers or comfort of any kind.
After surviving the excruciating ordeals, an estimated 75 percent of animals are then killed.
The “safety” tests are not only cruel; due to genetic differences between people and animals, they also are inaccurate and dangerous.
More than 90 percent of drugs deemed “safe” in animal tests fail once they hit human clinical trials.
Other animal-tested drugs get withdrawn from human markets after harming people — including the drug Lipobay, which passed animal trials but then led to kidney failure and death for more than 50 people.
U.S. scientists, as far back as a 2007 report as published by the National Research Council, have noted that animal testing is not the best way.
But the cruel and inaccurate tests are federally mandated, by provisions established in 1938 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And that law needs to change now.
H.R. 2565, or The FDA Modernization Act, is a major step in the right direction and would open the door for emerging, superior testing methods based on human biology to be seen as equally valid options for safety testing.
A growing number of scientists are pushing for human biology-based technologies — including cell-based assays, organ chips, microphysiological systems, and sophisticated computer modeling — as the quickest, safest, and most cost-effective solutions to developing accurate treatments for human disease.
The European Parliament recently demanded a phased-out end to all animal testing. It’s time for the United States to follow that precedent.
Sign our petition urging lawmakers and the Food and Drug Administration to end the outdated mandate of animal testing as the “only” acceptable safety testing method and allow proven, human biology-based methods to take their rightful place in human evolution.
