Cutting off funding for animal research would prove deadly for humans

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals just launched a new campaign aimed at an unlikely audience of one. The organization wants President Trump to slash funding for the National Institutes of Health. PETA claims the agency wastes money funding “experiments on animals that fail to produce cures or treatments for humans.” So it paid a mobile billboard to drive around the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort urging him to “Cut $15 Billion!” from the NIH budget.PETA’s publicity stunts may garner attention, but they’re utterly divorced from reality. Animal research is an irreplaceable step in the drug development process. Without such research, medical advances would grind to a halt — and countless patients would die of otherwise curable diseases.