New York: Jay Bhattacharya, the Indian-origin director of the National Institutes of Health, has ended the age-old practice of experimenting on beagles. Speaking on Fox News, Bhattacharya said PETA sent him flowers after he put an end to the practice. "Normally, I think NIH directors tend to get physical threats, but they sent me flowers," Bhattacharya said.
Elon Musk reacted to the development as he posted: "This is great".
NIH had a project on stress-induced and sepsis-induced cardiomyopathy that used beagles. The experiments involved inducing pain and distress in beagles. The project has now been terminated.
Bhattacharya explained that with the advent of AI tools, animals should be replaced in medical experiments and it also makes a lot of sense because these experiments do not always yield result. For example, he said it's very easy to cure Alzheimer's in mice but not in humans.
“It’s very easy, for instance, to cure Alzheimer’s in mice. But those things don’t translate to humans. So we put forward a policy to replace animals in research with technological advances, AI and other tools, that actually translate better to human health," Bhattacharya said.
