Meredith Blanchard: We’ve Cured Cancer in Mice for Decades

Species Unite

elizabeth novogratz

Society & Culture, Philosophy

5 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“There's a drug called vioxx that was found to be safe and effective in animal trials, so they moved it on to preclinical trials in humans. Once on the market, that drug caused 88,000 people to have heart attacks and killed 38,000 people.” Meredith Blanchard

We have some big news at Species Unite.

In January and February, our team traveled to Bainbridge, Georgia to begin filming our first documentary. Bainbridge is a small Southern town facing a truly chilling threat: a company called Safer Human Medicine is planning to build the largest monkey breeding facility in the United States right in their backyard.

If approved, this facility would hold up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques at a time—monkeys who would be bred in captivity, then sold to pharmaceutical companies for use in painful and outdated animal experiments. It’s a nightmare for the animals. But it’s also a nightmare for the people of Bainbridge: from threats to their water and soil, to dangerous zoonotic disease risks, to the loss of wildlife and community health.

The people of Bainbridge are fighting back. And they’re not alone.

One of our partners on this film is the National Anti-Vivisection Society, or NAVS—an organization dedicated to ending the exploitation of animals in science.

Today’s guest is Meredith Blanchard, the Senior Manager of Advocacy and Policy at NAVS. I spoke with her about what’s why animal testing doesn’t work and what it will take to finally bring it to an end.

Links:

National Anti-Vivisection Society https://navs.org/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Species.
0:07.0	Species.
0:09.0	Unite.
0:10.0	Unite.
0:11.0	There's a drug called Vioxx that was found to be safe and effective in animal trials,
0:19.0	so they moved it on to preclinical trials in humans. Once on the
0:24.1	market, that drug caused 88,000 people to have heart attacks and killed 38,000 people.
0:44.3	Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz. This is Species Unite. We have some exciting news at Species Unite. In January and February, we spent a lot of time in Bainbridge, Georgia,
0:56.1	filming our first documentary. The movie is about Bainbridge, this small Georgia town that is
1:01.8	fighting back against a big, wealthy company called Safer Human Medicine. Saper Human Medicine is
1:08.8	planning the construction of the largest monkey breeding facility in the United States.
1:14.0	This proposed prison for long-tailed macaques will be capable of holding around 30,000 monkeys at a time.
1:21.3	These monkeys will then be sold to pharmaceutical companies for animal testing.
1:26.2	Not only will this place be horrific for the monkeys,
1:29.6	but it will also be absolutely horrible for the people of this town, for their water, for their
1:36.3	soil, wildlife, threats of zoonotic diseases. And so the people of Bainbridge are in the midst
1:42.9	of the fight of their lives.
1:45.6	One of our partners in this film is the National Anti-Vivisection Society, NAAVs.
1:51.5	They are an organization that exists to end the exploitation of animals in science.
1:57.5	This conversation is with Meredith Blanchard.
2:00.4	Meredith is the senior manager of advocacy and policy at Navs.
2:05.4	And I asked her to come on the show to talk about animal testing, why it doesn't work and why's great to see you.
	...

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