‘Dinosaur’ to Tail POTUS to Kansas City in Push for Progressive NIH Director

For Immediate Release:
December 8, 2021

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins is stepping down, and a PETA supporter in a giant blow-up dinosaur costume will follow President Joe Biden to Kansas City today carrying a sign that reads, “Biden: Don’t Appoint Another NIH Dinosaur.” PETA is urging the president to take the nation out of the scientific Stone Age by choosing a visionary replacement who will end the agency’s funding of animal tests and instead invest in state-of-the-art, animal-free research methods.

When:    Today, December 8, 2 p.m.

Where:    Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, 1200 E. 18^th St., Kansas City, Missouri

With Collins at the helm, NIH has squandered nearly half its budget—$19.5 billion in 2020—on animal experiments every year, even though 95% of new drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials and more than 90% of basic research, most of which involves animals, fails to lead to treatments for humans. The Research Modernization Deal, developed by PETA scientists, provides a strategy for phasing out these studies.

“By clinging to archaic experiments on animals, NIH is getting in the way of good science,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on President Biden to move us into the 21^st century with a new NIH director who understands that new treatments, vaccines, and cures will come from modern, human-relevant research.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.