Sponsors (17)
Introduced February 13, 2025 by Ken Calvert · Last progress February 13, 2025
The bill pushes NIH and the research community toward human-relevant, nonanimal methods and greater transparency—potentially improving research relevance and reducing long-term costs—while increasing federal and institutional costs, compliance burdens, and transition risks that could delay some research and therapies.
Researchers nationwide will be required to evaluate validated nonanimal methods before starting animal studies, reducing animal use, improving study design rigor, and helping produce results more relevant to human biology.
The bill creates a dedicated NIH center and funding/training programs to develop, validate, and promote human-biology-based nonanimal methods (organoids, iPS cells, in silico tools), accelerating alternative-method science and researcher training.
Taxpayers and the public gain greater transparency through standardized, species-level reporting of animals used in federally funded research and biennial institutional reduction plans, enabling oversight and informed debate.
Establishing and running a new NIH center, new review processes, and reporting systems will increase federal and NIH administrative costs and could require new appropriations or divert funds from existing research programs.
Researchers and institutions will face additional administrative burdens — exhaustive literature searches, assurance statements, biennial reporting, and reduction-plan development — increasing staff time and compliance costs and potentially delaying grant submissions.
If alternatives are promoted or required before full validation, or if implementation is overly cautious, some studies may yield less reliable results or animal-based research could be delayed, risking patient safety or slowing development of therapies.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Requires NIH to prioritize and evaluate nonanimal research methods, creates a National Center for Alternatives to Animals, and mandates biennial public reporting and reduction plans for animal use.
Requires the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to prioritize, evaluate, and incentivize scientifically satisfactory nonanimal research methods before approving animal research; creates a new National Center for Alternatives to Animals in Research and Testing within NIH; and requires covered entities that receive federal funds and use animals for research or testing to publicly report animal-use numbers by species within 2 years and every 2 years thereafter, plus submit and post plans to reduce those numbers. The measure also tightens review requirements for proposals, adds search and expertise standards for finding nonanimal alternatives, and defines which animals are covered.