America’s Risky Retreat in Biomedical Leadership

Biomedical research is now a strategic industry, no different from semiconductor, energy, or defense manufacturing. Yet federal leadership in our country is enacting policies that dismantle one of its most important scientific assets. Reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to end research involving monkeys — a move framed as modernization — strikes at the heart of America’s biomedical capacity at the very moment global competitors are expanding theirs.

This is the latest step in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to phase out animal research in the U.S., an ideologically driven effort that sidesteps scientific evidence by exploiting our understandable desire to reduce animal suffering. And make no mistake, ending research with monkeys is not the end goal. It is only the beginning.

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About the Author

Cory Miller

Cory Miller is a neurobiologist and Professor at the University of California San Diego.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Biomedical research is now a strategic industry, no different from semiconductor, energy, or defense manufacturing. Yet federal leadership in our country is enacting policies that dismantle one of its most important scientific assets. Reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to end research involving monkeys — a move framed as modernization — strikes at the heart of America’s biomedical capacity at the very moment global competitors are expanding theirs.

This is the latest step in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to phase out animal research in the U.S., an ideologically driven effort that sidesteps scientific evidence by exploiting our understandable desire to reduce animal suffering. And make no mistake, ending research with monkeys is not the end goal. It is only the beginning.