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The mainstream media has a script they follow whenever the Trump administration makes a move they don’t like. First, they find the most alarmist possible framing. Then they quote ‘experts’ who just happen to have financial stakes in the status quo. Finally, they declare that public health is under attack. We’ve seen this movie before. But something interesting is happening with the administration’s push to modernize scientific research, and it’s exposing just how shallow the media’s narrative really is.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary just released draft guidance on moving away from animal testing toward what the agency calls ‘new approach methodologies’ or NAMs. The guidance explicitly cites the bipartisan FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which removed statutory animal testing mandates but was largely ignored by the previous administration. Animal toxicity studies have been ‘critical in the past,’ the guidance acknowledges, but ‘finding ways to improve human relevance while reducing the use of animals’ is now an agency priority. The public has until May 18 to comment on the proposed changes.
Here’s where it gets interesting. PETA, not exactly known as a MAGA organization, is praising the administration’s leadership. The group thanked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NIH, and FDA ‘for their leadership in moving the nation’s health agencies away from caging, poisoning, harming, and killing animals in experiments that have failed patients.’ The reception from the Trump administration is ‘night and day compared to previous’ GOP and Democratic administrations, according to PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. When was the last time you saw PETA praising a Republican administration?
The NIH announced the same day that it’s investing 50 million to develop research methods that better simulate human biology and reduce reliance on animal models. This follows a roadmap released last year outlining the shift toward organ-on-a-chip systems, computational modeling, and advanced in vitro assays. Several ‘validated NAMs’ are already outperforming unvalidated animal models in predicting human drug responses, according to the agency. Oregon Health and Science University even agreed to transition its primate research center into a sanctuary after years of pressure campaigns.
Of course, the New York Times found a ‘blindsided’ former primate center director to warn that such research ‘could cure H.I.V. in babies.’ They put scare quotes around descriptions of ‘transgender’ mice experiments whose funding was ended by DOGE. The same media that lectures us about following the science suddenly becomes very skeptical when the science leads somewhere they don’t like. But the alliance between MAHA advocates and animal welfare groups is real, and it’s shaking up political alignments that have been frozen for decades. Sometimes the most meaningful reforms come from unexpected places.
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