US NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya ends cruel medical experiments on beagles

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH) director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya has ended the practice of using the dog breed beagle for experiments related to sepsis, as part of the Trump administration's push to reduce animal use during medical experiments.

The NIH has closed its last in-house beagle laboratory on its campus.

The first Indian-American NIH director said that animal experiments don't always yield good results, and with the advent of more effective AI tools, they need to be cut down.

He cited an example of how it is easy to cure Alzheimer's in mice, but not in humans.

Bhattacharya said he would focus on using technological tools instead of animals in research, as the former is more effective to human health.

NIH has been working on promoting innovative, human-based methods, like organoids, tissue chips, computational models, and real-world data analyses, while reducing animal use.

A report by White Coat Waste (WCW) project had earlier stated that the lab used to pump pneumonia-causing bacteria into the lungs of the dogs and then force them into septic shock for deadly experiments and later euthanized.

Over 2000 dogs have died during these experiments since 1986, the report added.

Welcoming the move, WCW president and founder Anthony Bellotti said the taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for the NIH’s beagle abuse.

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit which advocates for ending animal research and utilizing human-based research, welcomed the closure of beagle laboratory.

Program manager Catharine E. Krebs hoped more such animal labs will be closed in future, both at the NIH and at institutions it funds.

Research using tissue chips, computational methods, and other human-based approaches have become a "norm rather than the exception", she added.

Animal welfare group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) reached out to Bhattacharya and sent flowers following the closure of the beagle testing facility.

"Normally, I think NIH directors tend to get physical threats, but they sent me flowers," Bhattacharya told Fox News.

After Donald Trump came to power for the second time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in April it would phase out an animal testing requirement for antibody therapies and other drugs in favor of testing on materials that mimic human organs.

During Trump's first term, the administration in 2019 closed the government’s largest cat lab.