IDA Continues To Urge NIH Peer Reviewers To Fund 21st Century Science, Citing A Half-Century And Billions Of Dollars Spent On National Primate Centers
IDA’s campaign to convince NIH peer reviewers to fund non-animal, human-centered, 21st century scientific research intensified this week. As a follow-up to our 25-page report detailing cutting-edge non-animal research methods, the broken NIH peer review funding system, and multiple examples from the scientific literature demonstrating the fundamental problems with “animal models,” IDA sent the following letter to Chairs and Administrators who are this week reviewing construction grant (“C06”) applications submitted by research facilities under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In this letter, IDA urged the reviewers to fund badly needed infrastructure for research facilities that do not use animals as well as the non-animal methods that desperately need space and financial support to operate.
We are writing you regarding the reviews of NCRR C06 Construction Grant applications prepared under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This is a critical time for the future of science and medicine in this country, and your decision will help determine that future. With that in mind, we respectfully request that you help allocate all of the C06 Construction Grant funds to research facilities that do not use animals.
In a report released last month to the Advisory Councils of 21 NIH Institutes and Centers, as well as the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, In Defense of Animals (IDA) recommended that the entirety of the NIH appropriations under the ARRA be spent on advancing and validating non-animal tools and techniques. This suggestion was based on commendations of cutting-edge biomedical technologies and critiques of animal research culled from peer-reviewed literature. The full report, which begins with an executive summary, is available online here.
As a logical extension of this report’s recommendations, we propose that the C06 Special Emphasis Panels focus all of its attention on reviewing and evaluating proposals for non-animal research infrastructure. The revolutionary research tools emphasized in the IDA report, especially multi-modal or “hybrid” scanners, require their own space in order to be viable. By contrast, animal facilities are already in place at many, if not most, research institutions, and yet these institutions are still planning to build more.
The National Primate Research Centers are among them. In just the last 12 years, the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) has allocated over $1.3 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars) to these labs in the form of P51 Primate Research Center support grants. This figure does not include construction, renovation, or other NIH institutes’ grants conducted at these centers—nor does it include the over 35 years of taxpayer-funded support for seven of the eight centers (which are currently in their 48th, 49th, or 50th year of operation). These billions of P51 Primate Center support dollars constitute a half-century of taxpayer funding.
Based on the content of research coming out of these institutions, it appears long past due for a fundamental change to occur in NCRR’s continued funding of these labs. For example, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center alone have authored scientific papers with such titles as “Sex Differences in Juvenile Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta) Agonistic Screams,” “Sex Differences in Rhesus Monkey Toy Preferences,” and “Androgen-Induced Yawning in Rhesus Monkey Females” - each of which was supported by the Yerkes NPRC P51 support grant. Some of these same NCRR Primate Centers are no doubt applying for ARRA C06 construction grants, which would capitalize on our country’s serious economic situation and compete with other institutions that have not been NIH-funded for half a century and where the money could make a profound difference in public health.
We are well aware that NCRR does invest in a variety of non-animal research infrastructure, including clinical research centers and biomedical technology centers. Also, we wholeheartedly support your most progressive programs, which take into account institutional disparities, specifically in the case of the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program, and geographic distribution, in the case of the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) program. Our hope is that you will be equally as progressive in your efforts to broaden the base of non-animal research methods, which have been systematically overlooked and underfunded. The NIH has given half a century and untold billions of dollars to the science of the past. We urgently request that - as mandated by the 1993 NIH Revitalization Act - you give the science of the future the same substantial long-term investment, support, and commitment.
Please contact the Scientific Review Administrators of these construction grant review panels and  politely request that they fund research facilities that do not use animals:
Barbara J. Nelson, Ph.D., NCRR Scientific Review Administrator, barbara.nelson@nih.gov
Mohan Viswanathan, Ph.D., NCRR Scientific Review Administrator, mohan.viswanathan@nih.gov
Carol Lambert, Ph.D., NCRR Scientific Review Administrator, carol.lambert@nih.gov
Here's a string of all three addresses to insert into your e-mail:
barbara.nelson@nih.gov, mohan.viswanathan@nih.gov, carol.lambert@nih.gov.
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