Physicians Committee Calls on NIA to End Its Support for Painful Rabbit Experiments

Researchers at West Virginia University (WVU) have received over $5 million in taxpayer-funded grants for experiments that feed a toxic, high cholesterol diet to rabbits in an attempt to model Alzheimer’s disease. Experimenters surgically attach wires to the rabbits’ eyelids, restrain them in boxes so they cannot move, and shoot puffs of air into their eyes. These procedures are meant to model cognitive decline, yet decades of this research have failed to advance our understanding of human dementias.

The Physicians Committee obtained documents revealing potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the justifications made for experimenting on animals. These include records of premature animal deaths, unapproved deviations from approved research protocols, and the admission that rabbits often die within a few months when forced to consume the experimental diet.

For example:

• On May 18, 2022, a rabbit developed paralysis in its back legs following a blood draw. It was killed two days later. An examination after death found an acute injury to a bone in its spine.
• On March 14, 2023, a rabbit was killed after only 11 months in an experiment intended to last between 28 and 33 months. No further details were provided.
• On April 25, 2023, a rabbit was found dead in its cage. The cause of death was liver failure due to the high-cholesterol diet.
• On May 26, 2023, a rabbit was killed due to lipid keratopathy—a buildup of fat in the clear front surface of the eye—caused by the cholesterol-supplemented diet.
• On August 30, 2024, a rabbit was found dead in its cage after more than a year of lab staff struggling to prevent recurring wounds on its rear hocks. The cause of death was listed as end-stage liver disease.

We’ve brought this information together in letters to NIA leadership, including the program officials who oversee the grants, NIA Director Richard Hodes, and the Institute’s advisory council. In these letters, we’ve provided evidence of animal welfare violations and scientific misconduct, in addition to highlighting the poor rationale underpinning the grants themselves.

Instead of animal experiments like these, we urged NIA to prioritize human-relevant methods. Researchers can investigate the relationship between diet, brain function, learning, and memory directly in people using longitudinal studies. These approaches allow researchers to investigate patient-specific biology underlying improved outcomes and long-term dietary impacts that cannot be studied in nonhuman animals.

The Physicians Committee has also filed federal complaints with the National Institute of Health’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, as well as the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, calling for investigations into these potential violations. Investigations are now underway.

By directing more funding toward human-relevant methods, NIA can help accelerate progress in understanding Alzheimer’s and other dementias, for which the causes and mechanisms remain largely unknown.