Just more than a year ago, Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, and President Biden signed the bill into law. It was, without question, the most important policy in the nation’s history addressing animal testing. The bill eliminated an 84-year-old animal-testing mandate for every new drug in development, whether a drug for cancer, pain, Alzheimer’s, or any other affliction of the human body.

This new law promised a reboot of our national policies on drug development, sparing the lives of millions of animals a year, saving drug developers billions because they could now use more reliable and less expensive screening methods, and delivering better lifesaving and life-enhancing treatments and cures for tens of millions of patients in need.

Now, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with implementing the law, is failing to revise regulations that still bind drug developers to use primates, beagles, and other animal tests. In holding onto these archaic regulations, the FDA is defying Congress and the will of the people.