AROUND 5,000 monkeys call the suburban sprawl west of Portland, Oregon home. Behind a row of houses, at the end of a long road with a security checkpoint, lies the Oregon National Primate Research Centre (ONPRC). With its tall firs and grand sequoias the lab can feel like a retreat in the woods. For nearly a decade Brandon Wilder, an immunologist, has used the monkeys to study malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that kills more than half a million people each year.
The campaign to end research on animals has forged one of the most eclectic coalitions in American politics. (Unsplash)
“It’s not easy, and no one enjoys seeing an animal in a cage”, acknowledges Dr Wilder. But he believes the human stakes warrant it. Earlier this year, some of Dr Wilder’s work on how the immune system responds to malaria was accepted for publication in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. He hopes the discovery could help with the development of a universal vaccine against the disease, a goal that has long eluded scientists. Besides malaria, his colleagues study HIV, dementia and infertility.
These days, though, such work has become a battleground in a growing campaign against conducting scientific research on animals. Robert F. Kennedy junior, America’s health secretary, has vowed to end animal experimentation and claimed that the country’s seven federally-funded primate-research centres, of which ONPRC is the largest, “have a profit motive”. In February the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a federal funding agency that awards the ONPRC around $50m a year, proposed converting the lab into an animal sanctuary instead. By July that plan was deemed too expensive and abandoned. Instead Oregon Health and Sciences University, which oversees the centre, announced it would gradually shift research away from primates.
The campaign to end research on animals has forged one of the most eclectic coalitions in American politics. Mainstream Democrats, progressives, right-wing populists, libertarians and the MAGA movement all find themselves working towards the same aim. And they are already making progress.
Working across the aisle
Animals are used across the biomedical research pipeline, from fundamental research on diseases to testing the safety of drugs before human trials begin. Most of the work is done on mice and rats. Monkeys are estimated to make up less than one percent of the total number of animals used in America. But the evolutionary closeness to humans that makes monkeys valuable as test subjects also makes the prospect of experimenting on them particularly abhorrent to many.
For decades opposition to animal testing was concentrated in the political left. But no longer. A central figure in the growing right-wing opposition is Anthony Bellotti, a long-time Republican operative. His organisation, White Coat Waste, casts animal research as fiscal profligacy, and ties it to issues that already animate conservatives. In Mr Trump’s first term Mr Bellotti produced campaigns alleging that reckless experiments on animals were responsible for the covid-19 pandemic, citing work at a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city in which the pandemic began.
By the time Mr Trump returned to office in January 2025 White Coat Waste had spent four years cultivating Republican allies and drawing up lists of labs to target. “I don’t care about the science,” Mr Bellotti says defiantly. “I’m the guy who cuts the money”. In April of last year Justin Goodman, Mr Bellotti’s second-in-command, met Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the NIH. Mr Goodman told The Economist that Dr Bhattacharya said he was a “big fan” of White Coat Waste and pledged to work to end all research on “cats, dogs and primates”. (The NIH did not respond to The Economist’s request for comment.)
One of Mr Bellotti’s most powerful surrogates has been Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist who is highly influential in Trumpworld. Scientists who conduct animal experiments are “abusers…on par with serial killers,” she says. She recalls that when she described the alleged details of some experiments to Mr Trump he was revulsed, calling them “sick” and “disgusting”. Ms Loomer has also lobbied Mr Kennedy and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. Both have chipped away at animal research in their agencies.
Democrats have generally opposed Mr Trump’s wider cuts to science funding. Animal research, however, seems to be an exception. In November the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a public-health agency, announced that it would shut a primate lab that is mainly used for HIV research. There was no outcry from Democrats. In Oregon Dr Wilder laments that some of the fiercest pressure on the centre has come from Democrats. The state’s progressive governor, Tina Kotek, has urged its closure.
For some the case for moving away from animal research rests on the idea that new technology can replace it. Collectively known as New Approach Methods (NAMs), such technologies include organs-on-a-chip; organoids, which are 3D replicas of human tissue; and AI models. Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, told The Economist that while he is “not an ideologue on this issue”, he considers “the vast majority” of animal testing “unnecessary” because NAMs “are much more reliable and give us much better data”.
But few of those developing those technologies agree. In 2023 the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine concluded that NAMs cannot replicate interactions between multiple organs within a live animal. “Replacing is just simply not on the table,” says Sergiu Pasca, a neuroscientist at Stanford University who has built some of the world’s most sophisticated brain organoids. Peter Kolchinsky, a biotech venture-capitalist, says “we don’t understand biology well enough” to replace animal models “and it’s possible we never will”. Other countries do not seem so convinced by NAMs, either. Chinese research institutions, as well as the country’s booming biotech industry, have been buying so many monkeys that they have bid up global prices for the animals.
American scientists can see the writing on the wall. In Oregon a brain drain is under way. Dr Wilder says 15 employees have left since the centre was plunged into chaos, among them four PhD-level scientists and four veterinarians. Recruiting has become “impossible”. Nor can the work done in Oregon be easily moved elsewhere. America’s six other national primate centres are already at capacity. Earlier this year Dr Wilder was offered a position in the Netherlands, as part of an initiative to recruit American scientists facing pressures under the Trump administration. “If we can’t stop things from imploding here,” Dr Wilder says, “I’ll hit the eject button”.
For Mr Goodman of White Coat Waste, that is the point. He says he wants there to be a “fear factor” for American scientists. “Not due to physical intimidation”, he says, but due to a climate that pushes them to conclude that research on animals is simply not worth pursuing in America.
Correction (August 5th): We originally wrote that 15 veterinarians had left the Oregon National Primate Research Centre. The real number is four. Apologies for the error.
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