Bill Maher blasts NIH for ‘colossal failure’ of animal testing: ‘Start helping people’

EXCLUSIVE — Comedian Bill Maher joined with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to call on Congress to “direct the National Institutes of Health to stop funding pointless animal experiments” and “start helping people the way we should.”

In a new video shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner, Bill Maher suggests that no additional tax dollars be given to the National Institutes of Health until its practices concerning animal testing are reconsidered.

HUNTER BIDEN USED BUSINESS ACCOUNT TO PAY JOE BIDEN IN 2018: BANK RECORD

“Let’s make sure they’re doing and funding actual science,” Maher says in the video distributed by PETA. “It’s the world’s premier health agency. Its mission is to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability of the American population.”

Maher then questions why government funds are spent on “addicting dogs to opioids, feeding alcohol to mice, and causing strokes in monkeys.”

“Call me crazy, but I think it might be a good idea for the country’s premier health agency to act on what the science has shown. Hurting and killing animals in pointless tests is a colossal failure,” he added before asking, “Has anyone seen an effective vaccine for malaria or tuberculosis? No. Well, how about a treatment to reverse or prevent multiple sclerosis? For that matter, why does cancer still exist? We can do better.”

The video follows PETA’s call for a national investigation in October after collecting documentation showing some 25,000 “extraneous” and “nonessential” animals were euthanized in part because some experiments were simply tossed aside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Tens of thousands of animals died for publicly funded tests that were never carried out because experimenters admitted that they were unnecessary,” PETA Vice President Shalin Gala said at the time.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Years of pressure from PETA and other groups have prompted some research schools and labs to slow their animal testing.

PETA has also devised a new testing program that doesn’t primarily use animals in tests.