White House slashes medical research on monkeys and other animal testing, sparking fierce new debate

Source: CBS News

Updated on: September 22, 2025 / 8:05 PM EDT


The Trump administration has canceled nearly $28 million of federal grants for animal testing as major federal health agencies are phasing out research on live animals in favor of new alternatives, a joint investigation by CBS News and The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, has found.

"We're witnessing a watershed moment right now," said Justin Goodman, the senior vice president of White Coat Waste, an animal rights nonprofit. "We have an administration that's skeptical of spending, skeptical of establishment science. … We are trying to slash and burn as much animal testing funding as possible."

The pressure for change comes from an unlikely coalition of animal rights activists and bipartisan members of Congress who want to halt what animal rights groups estimate as $20 billion a year in federal spending for animal experiments. Long considered a cause of the left, the animal rights movement has expanded and gained steam under the Trump administration. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is leading the charge against high drug costs, vaccine safety and the grinding approval process required to bring innovations to market.

Animal tests, often involving painful experiments that end in euthanasia, have played a crucial role in developing novel vaccines for COVID-19, malaria, polio and popular medications such as Tylenol and Ozempic, which ushered in a craze for weight-loss drugs.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/animal-medical-research-patients/