While animal activism is a good thing, PETA has a unique "the ends justify the means approach" that gives other activists a bad name. Historically they were famous for extreme publicity stunts to raise awareness for animals who can't advocate for themselves, but in recent years function more as a lobbyists interweaving animal protectionism with various unrelated issues. These lobbying efforts are contributing to the erosion and brain drain of American academic science among other important issues.

Full disclosure, I'm biased and affiliated with a non-profit trying to save academic research in Oregon. PETA has been the largest source of misinformation, using a huge amount of money to establish billboard campaigns, targeted ads, and misleading polls to paint the research center as villainous. Everyone wants to protect animals but the nuance of protecting life saving research dependant on animal models is a much harder position to argue than "save the animals".

Research is slowly drifting away from animal testing, but today many scientific breakthroughs (some concrete examples currently under threat include a cure for HIV, GLP1S, Non-hormonal birth control) rely on animals and non-animal alternatives haven't yet caught up in capability.

If your interested in learning more, Save Science Oregon is a website we've built to battle some of this information.