Animal welfare advocates who want to cut down on lab animal experimentation have found a somewhat unexpected ally in the Trump administration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, has called for a reduction in animal research, and the National Institutes of Health announced a new center dedicated to exploring promising alternatives. The administration also closed an N.I.H. laboratory that sickened beagles with bacteria, and cut funding to Harvard University studies that at one point sutured shut the eyes of two baby monkeys. Is this push to save lab animals just part of a broader anti-science agenda, a way to cast scientists in the role of villains, from an administration that has gutted research funding? How much of a role does President Trump’s ally Laura Loomer play in this when she rails against the use of taxpayer dollars to “torture animals”? The journalist Deborah Blum argues in a guest essay that we should not let cynicism about motives blind us to the end game. “Animal research has saved countless lives,” she writes, “but a concerted federal push to reduce its use and support reasonable alternatives is long overdue.” Blum’s views on animal research were shaped more than three decades ago, when she was working on her book “The Monkey Wars,” based on her Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting about the related ethical issues. She’s been frustrated by the lack of progress in the intervening years. She acknowledges that science is not ready to eliminate all animal research, but she is cautiously optimistic that the combination of political will and technological innovation may finally spur us to a more humane future. Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
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