6 Horrific Animal Experiments Happening NOW.
©Jørn Stjerneklar
1. Experiments on Babies
A National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory breeds dozens of monkeys every year to be prone to mental illness. Half of the babies are torn away from their mothers in order to inflict mental trauma on them, and they’re never allowed to see each other again.
These babies suffer from horrible fear, anxiety, and depression. Their misery leads to hair loss, diarrhea, and even self-mutilation.
In one horrifying experiment, babies are caged with their sedated mothers. The terrified babies frantically attempt to revive their mothers. In at least one case, experimenters can be heard laughing while a sedated mother struggles to stay awake so she can comfort her child.
Some of the young are addicted to alcohol, which makes their depression worse. The worst part is that the experimenters have even admitted that the work is not applicable to the treatment of human psychological trauma and brain disorders!
2. Meat Animal Research Center
Following reports of horrific cruelty at the taxpayer-funded U.S. Meat Animal Research Center(MARC)—including that animals were left to suffer, starve, and die—the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) halted all new experiments at the laboratory.
It’s good news that new experiments have been put on pause, but countless lambs, pigs, cows, and other animals are still suffering and dying in ongoing experiments at MARC—and that’s why PETA is calling for this cruel laboratory to be shut down for good.
Adding insult to literal injury, the lambs, pigs, cows, and other animals suffering and dying at MARC are not even considered “animals” under the federal Animal Welfare Act, as farm animals used in agricultural experimentation are explicitly excluded from the law’s definition of “animal.” As a result, the animals at MARC are deprived of the minimal protections afforded by the act and are completely at the apparently non-existent mercy of the facility’s experimenters.
3. Experiments on Monkeys
Every year, more than 100,000 monkeys are experimented on in the United States. Monkeys in labs are subjected to painful, invasive, and irrelevant experiments. They’re starved and restrained, and they’re infected with diseases and pumped full of chemicals and drugs. Experimenters drill holes and screw objects into their heads. Eventually, the animals are killed.
Thousands of these monkeys are imported into the U.S. each year. Air France is the last major airline flying monkeys to labs. Some monkeys are captured from the jungle, torn away from their families, and stuffed into tiny cages. Some are the babies of captured monkeys, bred on decrepit farms in Africa and Asia. They are never allowed to experience freedom or the natural life intended for them.
Monkeys are locked into tiny shipping crates and loaded onto planes (often under the feet of unsuspecting passengers). Sometimes, these monkeys aren’t given food, water, or veterinary care and die on the journey. These grueling trips can have multiple stops and last more than 30 hours! Those who survive are loaded onto trucks and must endure days-long transport to labs, where they will live a “life” of systematic torture.
4. Sex Experiments
Right now, NIH is funding dozens of horrifying sexual behavior studies in which animals have the sexual pleasure area of their brains damaged and their genitals mutilated.
Mice and rats similar to the ones pictured below have all the skin cut off their penises. Their genitalia are electrically stimulated with electrodes and injected with chemicals. They are then killed, and their penises are dissected. In other tests, experimenters locked female mice into restraint devices, drilled holes into their skulls, and burned lesions into their brains. The females were then presented with urine samples from both castrated and intact males, and the amount of time they spent sniffing each urine sample was recorded. All the mice were killed and dissected.
In yet another test, experimenters measured the time taken for male rats to mount females, insert their penises, and ejaculate. The experimenters then restrained the rats, cut into their skulls, implanted tubes into their brains, and pumped in a chemical that would block the rats’ ability to process sexual pleasure. The experimenters then watched the rats having sex, withheld sex from the rats for seven to 28 days, and noted the rats’ increased interest in an amphetamine reward. All the animals were killed, and their brains were dissected.
5. Military Tests
Each year, more than 10,000 live animals are shot, stabbed, mutilated, and killed in cruel military training exercises.
©Jørn Stjerneklar
In a horrific, never-before-seen undercover video footage leaked to PETA, training instructors hired by the military are seen breaking and cutting off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stabbing the animals, and pulling out their internal organs. After PETA filed a complaint about this disturbing video footage, which shows goats moaning and kicking as they’re stabbed and cut into (signs that they had not received adequate anesthetics), the USDA issued an official warning to the training provider for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act and Congress called for an investigation.
Violent military exercises like these continue regularly across the U.S., even though most civilian facilities and many military facilities have already replaced animal laboratories with superior life-like simulators that breathe, bleed, and even “die.”
6. Smoking Experiments
Health officials have known for decades that smoking cigarettes causes disease and that animal tests are poor predictors of these effects. Yet tobacco companies continue to force animals to smoke, even though more effective alternatives exist. Two of the world’s largest cigarette companies still conduct painful, archaic, and irrelevant tobacco tests on animals, even though they aren’t required by law and superior non-animal testing methods are readily available.
Tobacco giants R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris International continue to conduct horrible smoking experiments on animals. Animals have smoke pumped directly into their noses for hours a day. Their skin peels, their hair falls out, and their sore eyes actually begin to ooze. Experimenters paint their sensitive skin with tar, and they are sometimes plagued by tumors.
You can help these animals. Text LAB to 73822 (US) or 99099 (Canada)* to help end these cruel and barbaric experiments. Msg&Data Rates May Apply. Text HELP for help, STOP to end. Periodic Messaging. Full Terms: peta.vg/txt.
Urge Feds to Cut Funding for Cruel Experiments at UCSF.
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:
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.
Billboard Confronts Wayne State over Experiments on Dog Named Madonna
A Physicians Committee billboard near Wayne State University this fall highlighted the fate of a dog named Madonna who died in a Wayne State laboratory. Member doctor Sharon Kemper, D.O., a Wayne State professor, also testified before the Wayne State Board of Governors, urging it to immediately halt the heart failure experiments on dogs.
Wayne State experimenters have had a gruesome tradition of applying the names of celebrities or television characters to the dogs they will eventually kill in experiments. Madonna—the singer—was raised in the Detroit suburbs. The experimenters also named and killed Alice Cooper, Seger, Laverne, Shirley, and Squiggy.
Heart failure was artificially induced in Madonna by surgically implanting pacing wires in her heart and forcing it to beat faster than normal. Experimenters implanted numerous devices into her body and compelled her to exercise on a treadmill. Madonna was later killed.
Numerous other dogs have shared a similar fate in federally funded experiments. Madonna’s medical records are among the 67 sets of Wayne State medical records obtained by the Physicians Committee over the past four years.
Studies focusing on human populations continue to give researchers insight into the causes of heart disease, while human clinical trials provide treatment and prevention options. The Physicians Committee is calling on the federal government to focus funding on research that benefits human patients.
Johns Hopkins: Improve Your Medical Training
Physicians Committee billboards that surrounded the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in September called for an end to the use of live animals in medical student training. A Change.org petition asking the school’s vice dean of education Roy Ziegelstein, M.D., to end the animal lab has more than 100,000 signatories.
“Institutions now use training methods based on human anatomy, not the anatomy of a pig,” wrote Richard Bruno, M.D., a Physicians Committee member and second-year Johns Hopkins resident, in a Baltimore Sun op-ed. “These include virtual reality simulators that allow students to practice minimally invasive surgical skills over and over in order to improve technique—something you cannot do when using animals.” Learn more about Dr. Bruno in this month’s Physician Profile on the back cover.
“Institutions now use training methods based on human anatomy, not the anatomy of a pig,” wrote Richard Bruno, M.D., a Physicians Committee member and second-year Johns Hopkins resident, in a Baltimore Sun op-ed. “These include virtual reality simulators that allow students to practice minimally invasive surgical skills over and over in order to improve technique—something you cannot do when using animals.” Learn more about Dr. Bruno in this month’s Physician Profile on the back cover.
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine Chattanooga campus is the only other program in the U.S. and Canada known to continue to use animals.
