Michael Sauers

May 13, 2025

To varying degrees we all love ourselves, our families and our lives. Also, to varying degrees, we are in denial regarding the impacts our self-importance has on, well, everything. The list is long!

This post is about animal experimentation that is funded by taxpayer dollars. Until the boys from DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) showed up, government (taxpayer) funded animal experimentation was hush, hush. Much of the handwringing over lost research funding involves animal experimentation. Most, not all, experimentation is conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The NIH is the largest public funder of animal experimentation in the world. Conservative estimates are between $6 BILLION and $23 BILLION per year. YIKES! Bio-researchers are breeding, caging, injecting, mutilating, burning, dissecting, genetically modifying, testing drugs, doing surgery and much more. Animals experimented on include monkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, fish, rodents, pigs, sheep, cattle, birds, ferrets, hamsters, frogs and reptiles.

The USDA is no slouch when it comes to funding animal experimentation, spending approximately $10 to $20 BILLION per year. Their list of animals used is similar to the NIH. While the USDA does conduct animal experimentation, they also kill 1.4 to 2 MILLION animals because they are deemed a “nuisance” to US. These include various bird species such as crows, starlings, red-winged blackbirds and cat birds, raccoons, skunks, prairie dogs, beavers, pigs and coyotes.

Now, now! The politicians, bureaucrats, colleges, drug companies and, most especially, the bio-researchers argue vehemently that all of this is necessary and done humanely???????? The sizable opposition to this is equally vehement. The say it is an outdated jobs program funded by taxpayers. They say the cost is totally out of proportion to the results with billions of dollars being wasted each year. They say the results are dubious, difficult to transfer to humans and repetitious. They say the animals are sentient creatures subjected to cruelties that must be hidden from public view, just like slaughterhouses. They say that NIH’s commitment to prioritize innovative, human-based methods like organoids, tissue chips, computational models, and real world data analysis should be expedited

It is important to realize that our never ending quest for self-realization, self-importance and self-promotion comes with a price. I think the above is blatant speciesism. It is a difficult topic but if there is any generation that can address this issue, it is us.

There is a lot more on this. Research it. See Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.