Skip to main content
Ensuring the World’s Largest Funder of Medical Research Prioritizes Nonanimal Methods
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is in the process of updating its strategic plan, which will steer its funding of medical research across the U.S. for the next five years. Physicians Committee scientists and experts have provided input on high-level policy needs to transition away from animal experiments—like supporting workforce development and replacing animal facilities with infrastructure better suited for more ethical and effective 21st century science.
The NIH is mandated by Congress to develop and regularly update a strategic plan to provide direction to medical research, facilitate agency-wide collaboration, leverage scientific opportunity, and advance biomedicine. As a part of the strategic planning process, the NIH solicited feedback on the Framework of the NIH-Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2026-2031.
To maintain the NIH’s increasing focus on nonanimal research approaches, we provided input on how the strategic plan can further advance human-based methods and spare animal lives. We also prepared a cohort of physicians, scientists, and students to provide their own input and add their voices to this crucial advocacy opportunity. Our key recommendations to the NIH included:
Increase support for training and education in human-based methods. Human-based approaches can overcome species-specific translational barriers and have ever-increasing applications for medical research. To ensure the continued growth of nonanimal method use, the NIH should scale-up interdisciplinary education and training in human-based methods through measures like training grants and a pilot program to support investigators in transitioning their labs away from animal use.
- Prioritize human-based research infrastructure. Currently, as many as 100 million dogs, cats, monkeys, mice, rats, and other animals are used in U.S. laboratories each year. Continued investment in facilities that breed, house, and experiment on animals maintains that status quo. To build, improve, and sustain human-based research resources and infrastructure, the NIH should shift support from animal experimentation toward human-based infrastructure. Broader support for research centers and core facilities to develop human-based research technologies and provide research services and training will help make these approaches more accessible for researchers. Because human-based methods rely on human cells, tissues, and data, biobanks with large, diverse, and well-characterized samples will be key to infrastructure efforts.
- Strengthen policies governing the justification of animal use. To improve oversight and accountability, advance adoption of human-based methods, and reduce animal use, NIH policies governing the justification of animal use should be strengthened. The NIH should update language in policies and documents that stipulate how researchers must consider alternatives to animal use (the US Government Principles, the Public Health Service Policy on the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals) to require nonanimal methods where available. The NIH should also provide better training and guidance for researchers and those tasked with evaluating animal use and replacement justifications to ensure fair and thorough considerations of nonanimal methods.
- Accurately track and report on animal use. To foster transparency and accountability, improve public trust in science, and achieve the NIH’s goals of prioritizing human-based research and reducing animal use, the NIH should accurately track and publicly report on animal use in the research it funds. The NIH currently requests only crude numbers of animals used every four years from U.S. animal research facilities. But more than 95% of the animals reported are excluded from the requirements set out by the Animal Welfare Act—the federal law governing animal experiments—meaning those animals are never accurately counted by any federal agency. The NIH should require each federally funded facility to report the number of animals bred, housed, and used in the previous year, sorted by species and level of pain and distress. The NIH should then make those reports publicly available. Ask your representative to support the Federal Animal Research Accountability Act (H.R. 3295), a bill currently in the House of Representatives that would require the NIH to take those actions.
The Physicians Committee’s team of experts has been crucial to the progress we’re seeing at the NIH. We plan to keep up the pressure, submitting public comments and meeting with agency officials to turn commitment into action.
