Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s making animal welfare a component of his Make America Healthy Again mission.
The health secretary has asked his agencies to refine high-tech methods of testing chemicals and drugs that don’t involve killing animals. He thinks phasing out animal testing and using the new methods will help figure out what’s causing chronic disease. It’s also got an ancillary benefit for Republicans: Animal-rights advocates like what they’re hearing.
That’s another opportunity for President Donald Trump to co-opt a traditionally left-leaning constituency.
[The] National Institutes of Health announced it would spend $87 million on a new center researching alternatives to animal testing and permit agency-supported researchers to use grant funding to find homes for retired lab animals.
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The new center will attempt to develop a standardized alternative to animal testing that relies on tiny, lab-grown 3D tissue models, enlisting help from across the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration …. Harnessing science and technology to protect animals isn’t an obvious Trump agenda item. But the president has a pattern of taking ideas from the left and repackaging them for his base ….
