Elizabeth Baker, Esq.

Elizabeth Baker, Esq., is the director of research policy for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nationwide organization of physicians and laypersons that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and advocates for more effective, efficient, and ethical medical research, product testing, and training. Ms. Baker and her team work to modernize regulatory safety and efficacy testing by shifting product testing from the use of nonhuman animals, like dogs, cats, mice, rabbits, rats, and monkeys, to modern, human-specific approaches that are more relevant to humans because they utilize human cells, tissues, processes, and data. 

Ms. Baker develops strategies, builds relationships, and leads collaborations with scientists, policymakers, and other professionals. As a licensed attorney, many of Ms. Baker’s efforts focus on supporting scientific innovation by changing the policies and practices that act as barriers to the use of human-specific testing methods.  

Ms. Baker leads the Physicians Committee’s work to change agency regulations and guidance that require or recommend animal experiments. She also spearheads efforts to ensure that agencies offer usable paths for integration of human-specific approaches into regulatory decision-making. 

Since 2017, Ms. Baker has led the Nonclinical Innovation and Patient Safety Initiative (NIPSI), a broad group of drug development stakeholders—including federal agencies, pharmaceutical companies, academics, technology companies, and patient, research, and health organizations—in its work to improve the human relevance of nonclinical drug testing in order to expedite the availability of safer, more effective, less expensive medicines that are developed with less animal testing.  

In 2018, Ms. Baker lobbied with a small but effective team in California to pass the Cruelty-Free Cosmetic Act, marking the first state law to restrict the sale of cosmetics if the final cosmetic product or its ingredients were tested on animals. 

Ms. Baker frequently presents at domestic and international scientific and legal conferences. She has authored numerous science blogs, regulatory petitions, regulatory comments, op-eds, and manuscripts, including publication in Drug Discovery Today, ALTEX, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, ATLA, The Hill, STAT, the Food and Drug Law Institute Policy Forum, the North Carolina Central University School of Law Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Law Review, and the Physicians Committee’s Good Science Digest, regarding FDA policy and innovative human-based science for drug development. 

Ms. Baker is a member of the California Bar Association, the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology, the Society of Toxicology, the European Society for Alternatives to Animal Testing, and the Parenteral Drug Association. 

Ms. Baker graduated cum laude from California Western School of Law, where she earned honors in the health law and policy concentration and received American Jurisprudence awards for her work in FDA law, bioethics, animal law, and legal research and writing.