Why Are US Tax Dollars Still Flowing to Animal Testing Labs in China?
Unfortunately, the NIH’s damage control isn’t just too late. It’s also far too little.
There’s a reason Americans overwhelmingly oppose taxpayer funding for animal testing. The practice is ethically questionable and often gruesome.
Ms. Ernst is one of a bipartisan group of lawmakers looking to end this funding with the Accountability in Foreign Animal Research (AFAR) Act.
“The AFAR Act will guarantee not another penny will be spent subsidizing crazy and dangerous experiments, like putting cats on a treadmill or enhancing bat coronaviruses in Russia and China ever again,” says Ms. Ernst.
Ms. Ernst is right, and the AFAR Act is a step in the right direction. But the problem goes beyond tax dollars.
And this gets to the deeper problem. The government isn’t merely allowing these ethically questionable experiments on animals to occur; it’s actively funding the research, which is problematic for two reasons that go beyond dollars and cents.
First, government has created a massive industry around animal experimentation. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, and both the recipients of the funds and those who grant them have an incentive to keep the cash flowing—regardless of the ethics or the fruit born of the research.
Second, proper oversight and accountability of these facilities is hampered by the fact that the government is funding the research. The government is supposed to hold to account those who directly harm others, but the Wuhan lab saga shows how difficult this task becomes when the government itself is the bad actor.
Neither the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which administers the Wuhan Institute of Virology and reports directly to the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, nor the U.S. government has shown much interest in being transparent about what was going on at the Wuhan lab.
In other words, government officials will be more inclined to cover up the truth than hold themselves accountable for any crimes they commit or harm they cause.
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