What Can You Do for Animals in Labs?

Urge Feds to Cut Funding for Cruel Experiments at UCSF

petra
The University of California-San Francisco (UCSF)—which receives half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funds for research—has a long history of abusing mice, monkeys, and other animals imprisoned in its laboratories and violating federal animal welfare laws and guidelines. New documents obtained by PETA reveal that these miserable conditions continue to plague the more than 1 million animals in UCSF's laboratories.

Government reports and internal UCSF records document more than 100 violations of federal animal welfare laws and guidelines in just the past few years. Among the dozens of violations:


  • Experimenters didn't provide pain relief to mice and rats who had their skulls, backs, and abdomens cut into.
  • Experimenters placed live newborn mice inside a freezer meant for dead animals.
  • Experimenters cut out both of a rabbit’s eyes in an unapproved surgery.
  • Experimenters cut the toes off of mice without pain relief, and mice died from dehydration because staff failed to notice that they didn't have any water.  
A rhesus monkey named Peanut was subjected to multiple invasive brain surgeries and was deliberately deprived of food so that he would perform tasks while locked in a restraint chair. Peanut lost 25 percent of his body weight, but it was only after he was killed that experimenters realized that Peanut's jaw didn't open properly and that he probably hadn't been able to chew food.

A monkey named Squinty suffered with chronic dermatitis for more than a year. Red rashes and open lesions covered his body, and one medical report noted that the condition was so severe that there was "[n]o normal skin to provide a comparison."

Another monkey named Petra was subjected to invasive brain experiments and suffered chronic and painful complications, including a terrible bacterial infection in the wound where her head had been cut open. Experimenters continued to torment Petra for nearly two years despite her deteriorating health. She rapidly began to lose weight, circled endlessly in her cage, and ripped out her own hair.
UCSF's history of violating federal animal welfare laws and guidelines dates back more than 15 years and includes a $92,500 fine that the university was forced to pay in 2005 for dozens of violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) policies require facilities receiving taxpayer money to abide by animal welfare laws and guidelines as a condition of their receiving grants, but last year, UCSF received more than $500 million in taxpayer money—half of which was likely spent on experiments involving animals—even though it continues to regularly violate these provisions.

Please join PETA and call on NIH to cut taxpayer funding for experiments on animals at UCSF.


Two years ago, almost to the day, Harvard Medical School announced that it was closing the New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC), one of the oldest primate labs operating in the U.S. The news came following the deaths of four monkeys and reports that the lab had violated animal welfare laws.

When the public learned about the animal suffering occurring at NEPRC, many were shocked. But the unfortunate reality is that millions of animals suffer in labs around the world, and too few are aware of it.
What can you do? Help raise awareness!

World Day for Animals in Labs was established over 35 years ago to recognize the tremendous suffering that animals in labs are forced to endure. We have made great strides benefiting animals over the past several years, and a big part of this success has been achieved by raising awareness and educating the public.

The more people who are aware, the more people who will care!

Here are three quick ways to tell others about the suffering of animals in laboratories:


Urge Congress to Take Action for Baby Monkeys

baby monkey with cloth bottle

This action alert is only open to those who have a mailing address in the United States.

Each year, dozens of baby monkeys—intentionally bred to be prone to depression and other mental illness—are born at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory in Poolesville, Maryland. Within hours of their birth, half of the monkeys are permanently separated from their mothers and subjected to years of terrifying and often painful experiments intended to cause, worsen, and measure depression, anxiety, fear, and trauma. Some of the monkeys used in these experiments have had devices screwed into their skulls so that experimenters could inject their brains with a variety of drugs—including Prozac—that are already being safely used to treat human children and adults suffering from mental illness. Other monkeys have been injected with large doses of ethanol—deliberately turning them into alcoholics, which worsens their anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal. Many of the monkeys are killed and dissected before they reach the age of 8 years.

In addition to the obvious cruelty, these experiments have never improved our treatment of human mental illness. Meanwhile, numerous non-animal, human-relevant research methods have been developed that have yielded useful insights and treatments. Yet the experiments on monkeys at NIH have gone on for 30 years and have garnered $30 million in funding in just the last seven years.

World-renowned primate expert Dr. Jane Goodall and other experts have joined PETA in calling for an end to these experiments. And most recently, compassionate members of Congress fired off a letter to NIH requesting that it conduct a thorough scientific and ethical review of the inhumane experiments.

Please urge your members of Congress to join their colleagues and take steps to end NIH's cruel experiments.