UN LAB Middleware Label: End Names
PETA summons the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis “Blind Eye” Collins, and he should step down.
American taxpayers spend billions of dollars annually to fund the NIH, expecting the agency to pay back their investment with urgently needed treatments and drugs. Here’s what taxpayers get instead: the NIH’s constant dependence on failed animal experiments and the negligence, cruelty, and repeated violations of federal law in the agency’s own laboratories. Collins has served as director of the NIH since August 2009.
From January 2018 to June 2021, 75 cases of serious breaches of animal welfare were reported in Maryland’s NIH laboratories. The animals were suffocating, starving, and dying of dehydration. They were injected with the wrong drugs and subjected to unauthorized procedures. They were stuck in pieces of equipment and died desperately trying to escape.
One mouse catch fire when the experimenters did not notice that alcohol vapors were formed during the electrocautery operation with the release of heat. Another suffered for several days, listless and emaciated, after the veterinarian recommended immediate euthanasia, but the experimenter was unable to carry it out.
One monkey under anesthesia suffered a severe burn on its abdomen when the experimenter incorrectly placed a heating pad directly on its skin. The four others became so dehydrated when inattentive personnel did not notice the disconnection of the plumbing that they had to inject fluid through an IV. The female owl monkey lost 20% of her weight and was severely anemic, but she did not receive veterinary care and died in her cage.
The dogs were used in a study of septic shock, which was suspended after the experimenters deviated from the approved protocol, including the use of stitches that caused the infection.
From there, the horror continues, and it does not become more beautiful.
Over the years, Collins turned a blind eye to the gruesome sight he was watching and the fact that several precious treatments or treatments had emerged from his realm of suffering. Even when scientific evidence emerged that animal experiments did not lead to the cure and treatment of humans, the agency continued to spend public funds on cruel and unsuccessful experiments.
In its 2016–2020 strategic plan, the NIH acknowledged that “animal models often fail to provide good ways to simulate disease or predict how drugs will work in humans,” yet Collins continues to spend nearly half of the agency’s budget on this pseudoscience. year after year. …
Collins has been at the helm of the sinking NIH ship for over a decade, and has shown that he is unwilling or unable to direct it towards modern human research. If the United States is to maintain its position as a world leader in research, the NIH must change course now – with a new, groundbreaking captain at the helm.
Take the steps below to convince US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra to replace Collins with a new visionary leader who will pay tribute to the important mission of the NIH.