National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences - NIEHS    

Respect for life

Why Animal Research?

For many thousands of years, humans and animals have worked together and depended on each other for protection, livelihood, nourishment, comfort, and company.

Today their association has expanded from the farm, field, and hearth into the laboratory. There, because of their striking parallels to human systems and structures, animals serve as scientifically valid surrogates, or substitutes, for people in research, development and testing. These animals have made possible antibiotics, vaccines against diseases ranging from polio to Lyme disease, blood thinners and other cardiovascular therapies, pain-killers and many surgical procedures.

The laboratory rodent used in testing protects all our families from dangerous chemicals (by helping scientists identify them).

Animals themselves often benefit from the surgeries, drugs and vaccines developed. Similarly, the research of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences benefits animals because NIEHS research contributes to protecting the environment for all the life that shares the earth - companion animals, farm animals, wildlife, marine life - and plant life as well. All share an existence requiring freedom from pollutants in the air, soil and water.

And, as you will also read, NIEHS and the National Toxicology Program (which is headquartered at NIEHS) and other federal agencies have joined together to search out alternative test methods and approve any that prove reliable tests that would provide the accurate answers needed but with fewer animals or none at all. This effort is just beginning to show results.