It’s time to transform medical research so that it protects and benefits both people and animals!
Historically, attempts to advance medical research have depended heavily on violating the rights of vulnerable individuals and populations.
Fortunately, moral and scientific advancements have led to improved ethical and scientific standards in human research, and the public has increasingly demanded a research system that benefits and protects both people and animals.
The time has come to advance medical and scientific research so that it is respectful, safe, just, and focused on prevention and more modern, ethical, and patient-centered methods.
Take Action for Those Who Are Suffering!
PZI is working to transform medical research to advance the ethics and science of medical research for the benefit of people and animals.
Sign our form to show Congress, researchers, and other decision makers that there is a groundswell of demand for more ethical, modern research that protects and benefits people and animals.
Transforming medical research will lead to:
Why Do We Need to Transform Medical Research?
Although the US spends more on healthcare and research than does any other industrialized nation, the nation has fallen short on meaningful health outcomes and increased life expectancy.
Federal research spending patterns do not reflect true needs—including more effective strategies to prevent and treat conditions that range from heart disease and cancer to posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.
Meanwhile, millions of animals—including dogs, cats, and monkeys—are used and killed in US laboratories.
They’re forced to undergo painful experiments and to witness the pain and suffering of other animals living in sterile cages. Living with constant fear and pain, they can develop mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. They are deprived of the richness of life.
Most animals don’t survive. They either die during the course of research or they are killed.
A growing number of doctors, scientists, and policy makers question the validity and reliability of animal experiments, including the risks such poor science poses to vulnerable human patients and populations.
Research involving animals has not reliably predicted human responses to various interventions. High rates of false negatives and false positives are common, which increases the risk for adverse events in humans and delays medical progress.
There are more ethical, reliable, human-relevant research tools and methods, as scientific advances have grown leaps and bounds over the past several decades. Unfortunately, resistance to progress means that practical change has occurred at a glacial pace that endangers the nation’s health.
Credit: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University
It’s Time for a Belmont Report for Animals
Public outrage over research that has mistreated and exploited vulnerable people led the US Congress to appoint the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.
In 1979, the commission published The Belmont Report, which established the ethical principles that now guide all human research. The commission’s approach highlighted the importance of justice, respect for autonomy, avoiding actual and potential harms, and special protections for vulnerable populations.
“The time is long overdue for similar protections for animals. The practice of research involving animals must come to terms with centuries of scientific findings that lay bare the capacities and experiences of nonhuman beings.”
~ Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, co-founder and CEO, Phoenix Zones Initiative
Extending the Belmont Report principles to animals would set the stage for a just and antimaleficent framework for decisions about the use of animals in research, while incentivizing non-animal research methods that protect and benefit people and animals.
Sign our form to show Congress, researchers, and other decision makers that there is a groundswell of demand for more ethical, modern research that protects and benefits people and animals.
