gossipcheck / CC

We've written to Michael Jackson's estate asking for the rights to the singer's first solo hit, "Ben," which was written for the 1972 film of the same name. This beautiful song is about the friendship between a lonely boy and a rat named Ben, and we're hoping to use it to raise awareness about the plight of rats and other animals tormented in laboratory experiments.

Mice and rats make up the vast majority of animals used in experiments, but because they are excluded from the federal Animal Welfare Act, they are denied even minimal legal protection. Part of the message of "Ben" is that rats are frequently misunderstood. (For example—did you know that rats and mice are fastidiously clean, intelligent, and highly sociable animals—they even giggle!) In the song, Jackson sings:

Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to.

We hope we'll be able to use this song to inspire people to understand rats a little better and to join our campaign to stop cruel and archaic animal experiments on them.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

Did you catch PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk on CNN Headline News last night? She was on Issues With Jane Velez-Mitchell to speak out against plans to build a monkey-breeding facility in Puerto Rico.

Reports that this breeding farm would be stocked with monkeys snatched from their native homes in Mauritius are nightmarish enough, but the babies would then be sold for laboratory experiments. You know, like at Columbia University and Covance? Yikes!

Props to Jane Velez-Mitchell for recognizing that this story is newsworthy and for treating it—and folks concerned about animal rights—with respect. If you missed it, you should definitely check it out. Then head over here and tell Puerto Rico to cut out the monkey biz.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

Here's a lovely follow-up to a story we mentioned earlier this year: The Cle Elum Seven are now honorary citizens of Cle Elum, Washington.

The Cle Elum Seven are chimpanzees who were living out life in a laboratory, until we helped them gain their freedom and they were given a home at the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Washington. As you might expect, the chimpanzees have thrived in the new setting, and their neighbors are clearly pleased. To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the chimpanzees' residency, the City Council unanimously issued a proclamation that made the chimpanzees honorary citizens. The proclamation also commends Cle Elum's human residents for donating toys, food, blankets, and time to the sanctuary.

All together now: Awww!

It's beginning to look like a very positive trend is emerging for great apes. Perhaps some day soon, the abuse of chimpanzees and other apes in laboratories and in Hollywood will be a horror of the past.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

abc.net.au / CC

In today's installment, Engber describes the time he spent as a grad student working on a macaque named Clayton in a university laboratory. He describes how he returned to the lab years later to find that, while his life has moved on—and out of the laboratory—Clayton is still imprisoned, his whole world limited to just two rooms:

In all the time I'd been gone, Clayton had lived in the same room, on the same feeding schedule, and with many of the same neighbors. … Every day or two, he's carted off to a room painted all in black, and his head is fixed in place by the post that still protrudes from his skull. He sits there as always, staring at targets on a computer screen. When he moves his eyes the way he's supposed to, he gets a droplet of Tang as a reward.

Engber also talks about PETA's famous Silver Spring monkeys case, which was the impetus behind sweeping changes made to the Animal Welfare Act in 1985, including the creation of oversight committees that we are currently hounding to do their jobs.

While the series of articles focuses on the use of dogs in experiments, it also describes what is done to rats and mice. That's because no discussion of vivisection can rightly avoid the elephant (or, in this case, mouse) in the room—which is the fact that most of the whopping number of animals used in experiments are these small mammals, who, for no reason other than prejudice and convenience, are still specifically excluded from the Animal Welfare Act.

We strongly recommend taking a minute or two to check out the series—and don't miss part IV, which talks about PETA's undercover investigation at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

Click for a larger version

To check out the archives of past strips, click here.

chiefproperties / CC

Shockingly, even though rats and mice comprise more than 95 percent of the animals used in experiments, they are specifically excluded from the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the only federal law that protects animals in laboratories. According to the U.S. government, in its infinite wisdom, rats and mice (as well as birds and "cold-blooded" animals) are not "animals." (It's nonsensical, we know.)

That's why PETA has been doing end-runs around the worthless AWA by going straight to the companies that are required to test their products and pointing out the benefits of using effective and humane alternatives. We also monitor the various government agencies' testing programs and object every time we learn about a proposed test on animals that is redundant or for which non-animal alternatives are available. By doing this, we have been able to get dozens of tests on animals stopped (or the number of animals used greatly reduced), which has saved tens of thousands of animals' lives.

We think it's about time that our elected officials thought about rats and mice, don't you? Send a message to your members of Congress demanding that rats and mice be treated like the sensitive animals (not vegetables or minerals) they are.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

"World Week for Animals in Laboratories" means demonstrations against animal testing around the world. At UCLA on Wednesday, hundreds of activists from PETA, Last Chance for Animals, In Defense of Animals, Orange County People for Animals, and Stop Animal Exploitation Now banded together and descended upon the campus to speak out for animals in laboratories.

There was no way that drivers could have missed these passionate people or PETA's posters.

These people caused quite a stir with the pro-vivisection rally happening at UCLA on the same day.

In addition to mice and rats, cats, dogs, monkeys, and many other animals experience unimaginable pain in the name of "science."

To all the folks who showed up to express their disapproval of UCLA's abuse of animals in laboratories, thank you. You guys rock our world.

Posted by Karin Bennett

healthcarehacks / CC

This week is "Meat's Not Green" Week, but it also happens to be World Week for Animals in Laboratories. So, if you are already doing a little spring cleaning, what better time to clear out any household items you have lying around that were tested on animals?

Check out these suggestions for replacing items that you might currently be using with cruelty-free products that you can pick up at your local drug and discount stores, such as Walgreens and Target:

For a more complete listing, check out our searchable database!

Posted by Mylie Thompson

kyecha / CC

OK, that's not exactly what it says, but the report is very encouraging, nonetheless. What it does say is that the current testing programs, which rely largely on animal tests, are costly, time-consuming, and basically not up to the task of accurately and adequately assessing the toxicity of tens of thousands of chemicals.

Um, duh.

As the Boston Globe wrote just this week, even many researchers are now acknowledging that animal research "isn't even the best science" and that "[r]eplacing animals with human tissue has already proven to be [a] good business bet."

So, the EPA is now proposing a new "paradigm" that focuses on computer models, molecular biology, and cell cultures, using data from the human genome project, clinical trials, exposure assessments, and other technologies that the EPA calls "new"—even though many of them have been around for more than a decade now. Some of the technologies are even being developed at the EPA!

Here's a direct quote from the report: "The overall goal of this strategy is to provide the tools and approaches to move from a near exclusive use of animal tests for predicting human health effects to a process that relies more heavily on in vitro assays, especially those using human cell lines."

Can I hear an "Amen"?

The new EPA report is based on the findings of a National Research Council report released in 2007 that said essentially the same thing. This makes sense, because the EPA actually commissioned that report—though it's taken the agency nearly two years to evaluate the report's findings. What can we say? The wheels of justice grind slowly.

Now, if we can just get all parts of the EPA to act on its own report, we'll be getting somewhere. I say that because, just yesterday, PETA research associate Joe Manuppello testified at a hearing (which we called for) about proposed high production volume chemical tests that would kill another 10,000 animals. The proposed tests involve 15 chemicals, including sorbic acid (a naturally occurring fatty acid), castor oil, and oxalic acid, all of which are already known to be either safe or extremely toxic, based on years of experience and existing data from previous tests. At that hearing, we pointed out that the tests contradicted the EPA's own strategic plan as well as the basic animal welfare principles that the agency put into effect 10 years ago (under pressure from PETA). Those principles state that chemicals should not be retested if sufficient data already exist concerning the safety or toxicity of a chemical. According to all reports, the EPA officials found Joe's testimony riveting. (You have to wonder—if PETA can find the data, why can't the EPA? Is it just a matter of caring enough to find it?)

EPA, you're moving in the right direction. Now we just need all parts of your agency to walk the talk. Until you do, you can bet that we'll be pushing you every step of the way.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

therockhandle / CC

As those of you who have been keeping up with your NCAA "March Madness" brackets will know, this year's college basketball championship series is down to the final four schools, all vying for the top spot. Unfortunately, they're all losers.

I say this because, in a tragic irony, the universities that have the most talented athletes also seem to hire some of the cruelest animal abusers in the nation.

Need proof?

Villanova University vs. University of North Carolina

Villanova experimenters inject methamphetamine into rats' stomachs to determine whether the drug influences the rats' response time in behavioral tests (gee, I wonder). Unfortunately, as you might have seen in our "Who Cares?" video, this kind of pointless and cruel test on rats and mice is still legal—in fact, no experiment on them, no matter how painful, is against the law.

Maria Boccia, a vivisector at UNC–Chapel Hill, removes rat pups—at 2 to 14 days old—from their mothers for extended periods of time in order to induce a deep depression in the mother rats. She then places the mothers in cylinders of water from which they can not escape in order to see how quickly they are overcome with a sense of helplessness and stop swimming.

University of Connecticut vs. Michigan State University

At University of Connecticut, experimenters implant steel rods into rabbits' spines to keep them immobile. They then shock the rabbits with electrodes and measure the animals' brainwaves while they are still awake.

Not to be outdone, the returning "champion" from last year's contest, MSU vivisector Arthur Weber has continued his "work" removing the eyes of cats while the animals are still alive. Weber attempted to justify his cruel and pointless experiments last year; on Weber's behalf, an MSU official stated, "The animals are completely anesthetized, receive painkillers, and once the animals come out of the anesthesia, 10 minutes later you can't tell the difference." Yeah, you're probably right. I'm sure eyes are overrated anyway. What?! And don't forget the part where you keep them alive for a week after the operation and then kill them—I'd be willing to bet my March Madness pool money that they notice that too!

Of course, it's not the basketball players' fault that their schools hired such colossal creeps—animal experimentation is big business. As shown above, though, no amount of money can keep animal abusers from being morally bankrupt.

Posted by Ryan Huling

media.photobucket / CC

First stop on the Midwest Victory Tour is a school district in Wisconsin. A concerned citizen contacted us after learning that the district was offering a kids' summer science course that included six dissections as well as an activity in which students were given a live rat to "care for" throughout the duration of the course. We contacted the school immediately about cutting out the old-school classroom dissections and to inform school officials that rats need constant care and compassion, not a summer course's worth of "caretaking." After nearly a year of persistent follow-up, we are excited to let you know that this course is finally history!

Our next stop on the tour takes us to a Utah educational nonprofit that was recommending experiments in which live goldfish were put in ice baths in order to cause hypothermia. Since the experimenters probably wouldn't do this sort of thing to Fluffy, the family kitty, we sent the nonprofit a letter outlining why it's cruel to freeze any kitten—including sea kittens. After hearing our suggestion for cruelty-free coursework, the nonprofit has agreed to no longer suggest shocking the nervous systems of these adorable goldkittens for classroom experiments.

Well, that's the end of our Midwest Victory Tour. See, it's not all beef-expos and pus-farms in the Midwest. There's some compassion for animals too.

Posted by Shawna Flavell

Longtime PETA supporter Judith Yeargin fought hard not only in her 30-year battle against breast cancer but also against the use of animals in experiments. That's why Judith, who died on March 2, left her body to the New York University Langone Medical Center (NYUMC) She hoped to spare some of the countless animals who are sickened and maimed during painful, deadly, and wasteful experiments.

Judith was a tireless crusader for animals. She attended countless protests and helped raise money to build a low-cost spay-and-neuter clinic. Everywhere she went, she always kept an eye out for animals in distress. She rescued several strays during her travels, including a cat in France who had been hit by a car. Judith rushed the cat to the vet for immediate care while Judith searched for her guardian. While on vacation in Italy, Judith rescued a dog and wouldn't rest until she found the animal a good home. In France, she rescued another dog named Lucky, who accompanied her back home to Manhattan and lived to a ripe old age. When her elderly dog, Daffodil, was ill, Judith even managed to drag herself out of her sick bed just two weeks before her death to take Daffy to the vet. Daffodil was another of Judith's many rescues, adopted as a puppy from a local shelter after Judith heard on the news that Daffodil had been thrown into a trash compactor.

By donating her body to NYUMC, Judith not only promoted awareness about the suffering endured by animals in laboratories but also contributed to legitimate scientific research into breast cancer. Experiments on animals are not an accurate reflection of the effects of cancer in humans. It's bad science, and cancer patients deserve the best that medicine can offer.

"Judith never turned her back on any animal in need," says her dear friend, Lia. "[S]he just felt it was unethical to use animals and better if the science community could learn something from her body rather than cause pain and suffering to animals."

A great way to honor Judith Yeargin and other cancer victims is by refusing to support cancer charities that fund animal experiments and by purchasing only from companies that refuse to test their products on animals.

Posted by Liz Graffeo

One of the monkeys who was abused for experiments at ONPRC

For those of you who have hit-and-miss memories like mine, here's a quick recap: Our 2007 undercover investigation at ONPRC found that monkeys were tormented by laboratory staffers, forced to eat food out of waste-filled trays, denied medical care or pain relief, and driven mad by horrific laboratory conditions. Still, despite undeniable video evidence, the USDA somehow didn't see anything wrong at ONPRC.

At that point, ONPRC may have thought that it had won and that we would slink away. But, hey, this is PETA, after all, so think again, monkey abusers!

This past fall, we obtained new internal documents from ONPRC that detailed further abuse and neglect, so we submitted a new complaint to the USDA. In it, we outlined the following incidents:

• A sick, pregnant monkey was denied veterinary care and pain relief because the experimenters "didn't know the signs of animal pain and distress" (the mother and her unborn baby both died).


• A surgical sponge was left inside a baboon and was only discovered after the monkey was killed for an experiment.


• ONPRC experimenters accidentally performed surgery on the wrong monkey.

Wow. Cold-hearted and inept—a deadly combination.

Based on our complaint, the USDA inspected ONPRC, and this time, it confirmed our allegations. So ONPRC was cited for three violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including causing monkeys trauma, stress, harm or discomfort and failing to adequately monitor and provide veterinary care to animals.

And the agency didn't stop there: In December, the USDA issued an "official warning" to ONPRC that it may face civil or criminal penalties if additional violations are found in the future.

It's a hopeful sign of progress, but we're hardly done with ONPRC. After all, these incidents are only a small part of the cruelty still being inflicted on the more than 4,000 primates there.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

Over the past 16 months, PETA has waged a relentless campaign to end the military's archaic trauma-training exercises. In these exercises, thousands of live goats and pigs are shot, stabbed, cut apart, and burned, and monkeys are poisoned with nerve chemicals. We called on the Department of Defense (DoD) to investigate the military's methods immediately, and they appear to be taking our request seriously.

The DoD has chartered a Joint Analysis Team (JAT) to "examine the use of animals for medical education and training across the Services." The JAT will also submit a report containing "actionable recommendations" for the DoD to follow.

DoD regulations specifically state that non-animal methods must be used whenever scientifically valid and comparable alternatives are available. The DoD's use of live animals in trauma-training exercises is unnecessary. Various installations in the Air Force and Navy have been using alternatives, such as high-tech human patient simulators and rotations in trauma hospitals, for several years. Additionally, these second-rate training methods put our soldiers at risk.

We're hopeful that the JAT will come to the obvious conclusion that the DoD should end these cruel tests immediately and opt for more humane, educational alternatives. Check out the letter we sent to them about this issue here, and leave a comment to let us know what you think.

Posted by Liz Graffeo

In case it's never been said before, I'm going to go ahead and say it: Colorado activists rock!

Activists in Colorado Springs showed that they are fed up with Fort Carson for stabbing and reportedly burning and shooting live goats in bloody trauma-training exercises that attempt to mimic human battlefield injuries. They staked out a busy intersection near Fort Carson and got busy alerting commuters that the exercises are not only cruel but also archaic and unnecessary.

PETA "troops" expose Fort Carson's dirty little secret.

An activist makes darn sure that no driver gets by without getting the message.

PETA signs caught the attention of many military folk on their way to the Fort Carson base.

Oh, did I mention that some of the activists in attendance were ex-military? You know that things are shady when even former soldiers start breaking rank. (I can think of a few other soldiers who would probably agree.)

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

After our recent demonstration in New Haven to let residents know that Yale is spending millions of taxpayer dollars torturing monkeys, the university wasn't exactly ready to throw open its doors and give guided tours to people who wanted to find out more. Well, Yale's secretive vivisectors may have been a bit surprised on their drive to work when they saw our massive new billboard near their facilities calling on anyone who witnesses cruelty in the university's labs to blow the whistle:

Whistleblowers have been instrumental in revealing neglect, carelessness, and cruelty in laboratories across the nation. This has led to countless victories for animals—so we're always eager to hear from people with the inside scoop.

Even if you don't work in a laboratory, you can blow the whistle on animal abusers. Whistleblowers have revealed details of Ringling's abuse of animals, shed light on beatings of animals on movie sets, and given us behind-the-scenes information on the horse-racing industry. Wherever you see animals abused—whether at a race track, pet shop, circus, carnival, or in your own neighborhood—speak up and let us know about it!

Posted by Liz Graffeo

Back in December, we announced the winners of our annual "Proggy" awards, which recognize animal-friendly people, companies, and products. One of those companies is CeeTox, a Michigan firm that develops humane alternatives to cruel and archaic animal tests. Well, the good folks at the Kalamazoo Gazette just did a nice story about CeeTox and the award. Check it out here.

What CeeTox does is so great because many chemical-testing methods still involve pumping substances into animals' stomachs and lungs and dripping chemicals into animals' eyes or onto their raw, shaved skin. CeeTox, by contrast, uses in-vitro (test tube) toxicity screening to test drugs, chemicals, cosmetics, and consumer products. This enables research and development organizations to assess the toxicity of chemicals using pioneering and humane cell-based technology.

Besides being kind to animals, these modern, non-animal tests are cheaper, faster, and more accurate. What's not to like? Well, unfortunately, the wheels of progress grind slowly at the EPA, which lags far behind European authorities in validating modern test methods. But thanks to the work of CeeTox and other companies like it, it's becoming obvious that animal testing is long overdue for the old heave-ho.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

yimg / CC

Click here to read Laflin's full letter.

Laflin has graced PETA ad campaigns with her sexy (naked) body in support of vegetarian living and against rodeo cruelty. She also has a big place in her heart for the animals used (and abused) in experiments.

Hopefully, Hodges will be big enough to have a change of heart and take her career to a different, cruelty-free level. I mean, heck, when a woman like this tells you to jump, you just ask how high.

Posted by Christine Doré

court-records / CC

This wonderful news means that animals will not be used in the overwhelming majority of such tests in the future in Europe. The MatTek Corporation announced yesterday that the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods' Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC) has formally endorsed the scientific validity of the company's Modified EpiDerm Skin Irritation Test as well as L'Oreal's SkinEthic test. I know those are an awful lot of big, impressive words, but it basically means that the big men and women on campus are totally down with these new processes, which do not involve animal testing.

This will allow manufacturers worldwide to use these exciting new non-animal methods. It will also help manufacturers test cosmetic ingredients humanely, which is especially important because animal testing for skin irritation and most other purposes will be banned in Europe as of March 2009. Tens of thousands of rabbits have been used for skin irritation tests each year in the past, but we say, "No more!"

The validation of these tests is an important step in adopting cruelty-free scientific methods that are effective and humane, and PETA Europe should be so proud to have played a part in that. You can read more about this whole situation here.

On another totally not surprising—but totally awful—note, the U.S. still does not accept these tests. We are, of course, writing the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle (read letter here), to tell him to get the U.S. to stop stalling!

Posted by Christine Doré

ucdavis / CC

Everyone knows how animals in laboratories suffer, so why would anyone knowingly choose to inflict pain on another creature for the sake of unreliable and cruel animal testing, especially when there are so many cruelty-free alternatives? CSPI tried to say that they needed to test on rats and mice because the rats they used before weren't good models for the substance's toxicity in humans. Hang on, what? That's right, they know that the tests on rats don't work, but they want to repeat the tests on rats and do even more tests on mice. Anyway, the FDA finally did something right and approved the substance without the additional animal tests. Score!

Unfortunately, there is still animal testing going on, and the CSPI is still pushing for more and longer animal tests. You can help by sending a polite letter to CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson asking him to focus CSPI's work on safe and effective non-animal testing methods.

Posted by Lianne Turner

Well, I'm excited to announce that today marks another step in the right direction for Ross University. While PETA protestors demonstrated outside DeVry's shareholder meeting—DeVry being Ross University's parent company—PETA Laboratory Methods Specialist Shalin Gala met with the bigwigs inside. The CEO informed him that Ross University will no longer perform terminal surgeries, full stop. Personally, I'd like to think that the giant, friendly "sheep" who were hanging around outside the meeting had something to do with that announcement! That or the thousands and thousands of messages from compassionate people that Ross University has received.

Rather than settling on this step forward, we will commit to re-doubling our efforts against Ross University and DeVry's harmful experiement. It's great that healthy animals at Ross will no longer be killed, but invasive procedures—such as severing the nerves in donkeys' toes, cutting their ligaments, inserting plastic tubes through their noses and into their stomachs, surgically puncturing their abdomens, cutting their tracheas (or windpipes), and removing fluid from their joints—will presumably continue. Every little improvement helps, of course. But c'mon, Ross, catch up with the times and cut out the cruelty.

Here's hoping that Ross University will continue to improve and eventually stop animal tests altogether. Feel free to drop them a line and tell them what you think!

Posted by Amanda Schinke

abc / CC

Part of the first experiment called for students to pump the chemical strychnine into the stomachs of approximately 150 mice through surgically-attached stomach tubes. That's right, strychnine—and then the students were required to observe and record the animals' convulsions. The second experiment required the students to inject pentylenetetrazol, a convulsion-causing chemical, into approximately 135 mice. The students then had to inject acetic acid into the animals, which caused their bodies to contort painfully.

Now, both experiments have been canceled—and nearly 300 mice will be spared these terrible procedures every semester. The university will still conduct experiments on animals—including one cruel blood-pressure manipulation experiment in which students slice open animals' windpipes and blood vessels—but the university has also agreed to dramatically reduce the number of rats who are used in that experiment—to just one.

These victories come after PETA successfully convinced National Taiwan University College of Medicine to end similar experiments on animals earlier this year.

This is a great start for National Yang-Ming University and National Taiwan University College of Medicine, where school officials are beginning to realize that animal experimentation is not just unnecessary—it's inaccurate and completely inhumane.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

Katherine Heigl wearing our "Have a PETA Day" T-shirt

Well, last night was probably my favorite television night of all time, because the best show ever also brought in an important message about animal rights. (TV + AR = my life, so you can see why I was thrilled.)

If you missed it, let me catch you up. Dr. Hunt, the new head of trauma surgery, wanted to train the residents and interns on how to deal with trauma patients, and he said that dealing with live tissue was the best way to learn. So he tied down six sedated pigs and stabbed them with knives, and then he asked the doctors to perform surgery to keep the pigs alive. (Though I'm quite sure that in real life the pigs were fake, as the show had several notices that no animals were harmed in filming.)

Enter Dr. Izzy Stevens, played by Katherine Heigl. Izzy refused to do the assignment and explained how completely unnecessary it is to test on live animals when we have such advanced alternatives that don't require us to do that. She said that animals are sensitive, emotional creatures that feel pain and don't deserve to be tortured. We are so right there with you, Izzy!

When Dr. Hunt continued to berate Izzy about this issue, she stood up for herself and for animals everywhere and never backed down. She even explained that testing on animals is pointless and can sometimes even work against medical progress. Even though a test might be successful when the subjects are animals, people and animals are different species and therefore will show completely different results.

Even no-nonsense, steely Dr. Yang took a liking to the pigs and called them by name. When the surgeries finished, Hunt ordered Yang to euthanize the pigs and she refused.

What an excellent episode! I was so thrilled to step away from Meredith's whiny, self-obsessed life for a while to focus on the other characters—and such a positive message for animals.

Now, if only Ross University had seen this episode ….

Posted by Christine Doré

In honor of Halloween (and our peta2 zombie protesters), let me start this out by saying, "Braaaaaains!"

Good—now that I've got that out of my system, we can talk about the 11 awesome professional athletes who have all agreed to donate their brains to science!

That's right, these athletes—including six retired NFL players, among others—will all be donating their brains (post mortem, of course) to a study headed (tee hee) by the Sports Legacy Institute and Boston University. The study will use these oft-concussed brains to determine if there is a definite link between concussions and traumatic encephalopathy.

You might know traumatic encephalopathy better as "punch-drunk syndrome," or "boxer's dementia." Dementia and parkinsonism have long been linked to repeated concussions—such as those suffered by boxers or football players—and this study will further explore this relationship.

Sadly, studies like this often inflict head trauma on primates—only to kill them shortly afterwards—in order to simulate concussions in human brains! That's why these athletes' donations are so valuable—by donating their brains, these athletes have spared countless animals from suffering the torture of enduring repeated traumatic injuries. Their brains, by the simple nature of being human brains, will also provide science with much more reliable and conclusive results than any an animal test could provide.

That's why PETA is presenting these athletes with our Compassionate Action Award! Each athlete will receive a framed certificate and letter of appreciation—and the unspoken thanks of all the animals who will not have to suffer in the name of "science."

The awards go to retired NFL players Isaiah Kacyvenski, Ted Johnson, Frank Wycheck, Ben Lynch, Bernie Parrish, and Bruce Laird; former U.S. Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson; Florida Panthers hockey player Noah Welch; former U.S. Women's National Soccer team player Cindy Parlow; former boxer Maurice "Termite" Watkins; and last, but not least, Sports Legacy Institute founder, former Harvard football player, and former professional wrestler Chris Nowinski.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

Four monkey-masked PETA members paid Yale a little visit yesterday in honor of National Primate Liberation Week.

As motorists passed underneath the banner-wielding monkeys, they were reminded that "Yale Murders Monkeys." Well, specifically, Yale imprisons monkeys in tiny cages, mutilates them, injects them with poison, forces drug addiction on them, and eventually kills the animals as part of the experiments—but "murders" pretty much covers it, don't you think?

That's right—the more than 160 primates who are locked up in Yale's laboratories are the subjects of many cruel experiments, several of them drug-related. Some of the more heinous abuses include injecting toxins into monkeys’ brains so that they can’t walk, move or eat, addicting the monkeys to PCP to induce schizophrenia (excuse me?) and addicting them to nicotine by giving them the equivalent of smoking 17 packs of cigarettes per day. Because, ya know, exposing a monkey to 17 packs' worth is really reflective of an average human smoker's habits. Right.

The vivisectors at Yale are even killing pregnant monkeys and removing their fetuses in order to cut out their brains. If this were happening anywhere else, it would be condemned as psychopathic, murderous behavior—but because it's done in the name of "science," we're expected to accept this.

Well, forgive me, but this isn't the kind of thing that we at PETA tend to accept—and neither, I think, would most reasonable people. These monkeys are being tortured and murdered at taxpayer expense, but who said the taxpayers approve?

If you don't approve, please write the National Institutes of Health and ask them to end their policy of funding animal experiments like these.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

Michael B. Hennessy
carleton / CC

Michael B. Hennessy, a psychology professor at Wright State University, spends his time tormenting baby guinea pigs. With help from over $350 thousand in funding from taxpayer dollars, Hennessy has learned a lot about sickness and stress in laboratory animals, but he himself isn't confident that the results can be safely extrapolated to humans.

Hennessy takes guinea pigs from their mothers when the newborns are less than 1 month old to observe the resulting "stress-induced sickness behavior." To worsen things, the babies are injected with a behavior-altering substance to see how it affects them. They are forced to endure invasive surgeries, including having their heads cut open, tubes stuck inside, and various chemicals and agents injected into them—including E. Coli bacteria!

To make matters worse, even Hennessy himself sees the obvious problem with his methods—the fact that guinea pigs aren't people. In a recent paper, he concludes that "caution is required in generalizing from studies of sickness in laboratory animals to depression in humans."

Owen Floody
bucknell / CC

Floody starts with healthy female hamsters, carves into their skulls, damages their brains, and then examines how this affects their sexual behavior. To assess this, he drops them in a box with a male hamster or "manually stimulates" them (you don't want to know). At the end of this bizarre ordeal, the animals are killed and their brains are dissected.

Floody even gets his students involved in these experiments, allowing undergraduate students in his physiological psychology course to help with this torture. PETA has already expressed its concerns to Bucknell, and you can chime in to help end these experiments by clicking here.

What'll it be? The Wright State professor who grasps the underlying problem with vivisection but does it anyway? Or the Bucknell professor who "manually stimulates" then kills female hamsters? Leave a comment to let me know!

Posted by Sean Conner

In 2007, PETA received a call from a whistleblower who tipped us off to a Cleveland lab, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF), that performed a fatal brain surgery on a dog for a useless medical-device sales demonstration.

Fast forward to 2008. PETA has received yet another tip from a whistleblower because of yet another alleged unnecessary dog death at the CCF—and this time it appears to be a violation of federal law.

The whistleblower alleges that a healthy dog—who had undergone an experimental transplant in which a heart was inserted into her neck—was killed after surgeons discovered that her airway was blocked by hay. Sadly, the whistleblower says that the dog was knowingly allowed to eat the dangerous hay from the pens of other animals while roaming around the laboratory and disturbing other animals who were recuperating from painful surgeries. I'm pretty sure that the surgeons needed that extra heart, not the dog…

PETA has filed a complaint against the facility with the USDA, and we are asking for an immediate investigation into alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. The potential violations include failure to ensure proper nutrition for dogs (at least one was apparently allowed to eat hay) and failure to ensure adequate veterinary care for animals used in experiments, just to name a couple.

Many Cleveland residents, especially those who frequent the Dawg Pound, would be horrified to know that a lab in their city might be guilty of repeatedly killing healthy dogs who are used in useless experiments. The CCF needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for its apparent disregard for animal welfare, and we hope that the USDA will do just that.

If you want to help, please politely contact the CCF using the information below and ask that it conduct a full and thorough investigation of this matter and take all appropriate corrective actions.

Please send polite comments to:

Paul E. DiCorleto, Ph.D., Chair
Lerner Research Institute
Cleveland Clinic
Mailstop NB21
9500 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44195
216-444-5849
dicorlp@ccf.org

Sad news—House Peters Jr., the man we all know and love as Mr. Clean, passed away yesterday at the respectable age of 92.

I pretty much love the character of Mr. Clean. In a world of cleaning-product commercials featuring only women, Mr. Clean's gender-stereotype–defying presence was always refreshing. (Plus, he had an earring, which is cool—and pretty progressive for the 1950s, when the character premiered!)

What I don't love, though, is the company responsible for the product Mr. Clean—Proctor & Gamble (P&G), the infamous maker of animal-tested Iams! PETA's problem with P&G goes back pretty far—far enough, in fact, for us to have parodied Mr. Clean's image on a 1998 protest door hanger.

But that wasn't enough to convince P&G to stop abusing animals in the name of "research." While P&G has developed non-animal testing methods and worked to end much of its outdated testing program, even today, eight years later, P&G–owned Iams continues to keep up to 700 dogs and cats locked inside hidden laboratories.

So as we say goodbye to Mr. Clean, we urge you to honor his memory by, say, wearing white T-shirts and gold earrings—not by purchasing Iams.

For a list of dog and cat food brands that are not tested on animals, click here.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

If you've been on planet Earth in the last 24 hours, you've probably heard the phrase "If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig" more times than you can count. Well, we at PETA would like to put our own spin on this phrase and let everyone know that there should never be any real reason for lipstick on a pig unless it's because you've just given a pig a big kiss for being so darn cute.

Next time you do your makeup in the morning, ask yourself, "Who was my lipstick tested on?" Rats, mice, and bunnies are still exploited in the world of product testing, and pigs are used for cruel experiments as well. And yes, pigs still suffer from abuse in the factory-farming industry.

We've thrown our own spin on this whole "lipstick on a pig" media frenzy and created the following two ads to make people think about where their cosmetics and their food come from. Check out our new ads, and please vote for your favorite by leaving a comment below!

iStockPhoto.com/Christian Lohman

Posted by Christine Doré

Anyone planning to visit the Caribbean this season who comes across our new ad taking aim at the St. Kitts tourism board's promotional campaign will probably choose to visit another island—any other island. That's because PETA's poster shows a man splashing in a blood-red sea and carries the tagline "Deplore St. Kitts." PETA's poster explains that St. Kitts is home to the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine—the cruelest such institution of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

Try to guess what the original slogan was.

As loyal readers of The PETA Files know, PETA has been urging Ross to join other veterinary schools in using only modern teaching methods that do not harm healthy animals. In response to PETA's campaign and a student's lawsuit, Ross announced earlier this year that it would end invasive and terminal surgeries on healthy dogs, but the school continues to require students to cut up and kill healthy donkeys, goats, and sheep.

PETA also recently purchased stock in Ross' parent company, DeVry Inc., in order to use its position as a shareholder to increase pressure on Ross to make these much-needed reforms.

If you now deplore St. Kitts because of our enlightening ad, go ahead and do the animals justice—give Ross University a piece of your mind!

Posted by Carrie Ann Harris

David Gozal
louisville / CC

Let me begin by recognizing Marina Picciotto, whose primate addiction studies and mouse torture won her the undesirable title of Most Vile Vivisector last month. Her competitor was much-derided Allyson Bennett. Congrats, Marina—I'm certain Yale and all of New Haven are glad to have you!

This month, we have another two truly bizarre candidates … just see for yourself.

David Gozal of the Kosair Children's Hospital Research Institute in Louisville has a bit of a problem. He is fascinated by erections—mouse erections, to be exact. He passes his days in the lab getting up close and very personal with little boy-mice, studying their erections and even severing their spinal cords so that they cannot move while experimenters observe their penises.

In his most recent study, "Erectile Dysfunction in a Murine [Mouse] Model of Sleep Apnea," which was funded in part by the federal government, Gozal measured the number of erections and ejaculations in dozens of mice after placing them in a chamber to deprive them of oxygen. Some mice were also given tadalafil, an erectile dysfunction drug. They were then killed by puncturing their hearts with a needle, and their testicles and penises were cut out of their bodies for examination. Gozal concluded that oxygen deprivation makes it more difficult to get an erection and that tadalafil, which is already prescribed (as “Cialis”) for humans with erectile dysfunction, works in mice.

Experiments on pigs

In another study, Traber heated an aluminum bar to nearly 400 degrees with a Bunsen burner and roasted the skin of live pigs on it for 30 seconds, creating a series of deep burns that covered 15 percent of their bodies. In order to repair the deliberately injured animals, Traber and colleagues then removed skin from the pigs' legs to graft over the areas that had been burned off. After living through all this torture, the pigs were killed. Again, this is only his most recent work—Traber has been burning, mutilating, and killing sheep for years.

Who should win? The Children's Hospital Vivisector or the Bunsen Burninator? As always, let me help you decide by posing a question: Would you rather be molested, stabbed in the heart, and have your genitals torn out, or would you rather be roasted alive over a Bunsen burner, forced to inhale the smell of your burning flesh, and then killed?

It's a burning question, isn't it?

Posted by Sean Conner

msnbcmedia1 / CC

Get this—the vivisectors at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences have announced a new wonder drug, a magical pill that would, they say, mimic the effects of exercise. Just swallow a little pill, their report says, and experience increased muscle endurance and doubled fat-burning muscle. It's SO easy!

The mice who were subjected to the drug apparently showed a decrease in fat and an increase in oxygen consumption—but not any of the other benefits from exercise. People are asking serious questions about the "just like exercise" claim.

It seems to me that the vivisectors at Salk got vaguely promising results from the mice and decided to cash in on America's fascination with weight loss and reluctance to exercise—not to mention all the Olympics-related fitness hubbub that's going on right now!

But come on, we really shouldn't be surprised that these "scientists" are grossly exaggerating their lab results in order to make headlines—think about all the other "scientific breakthroughs" that have been "proven" by mouse vivisection. As Yale University's Dr. David Katz writes, "Extrapolation from rodent research to outcomes in people is notoriously uncertain and fraught with danger. Basic science studies and animal experiments have resulted over the years in headlines about cures for cancer, a definitive obesity gene and effective AIDS vaccines, to name a few. None of these has yet to materialize, and early hyperbole in each case gave way to disappointment."

Well, I'm sure people will be disappointed—disappointed that animal testing is still going on, despite its cruelty, its inaccuracies, and the better alternatives that exist.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

paddleasia / CC

Charles River's announcement follows a string of contact with PETA from a whistleblower claiming to be a Charles River employee, who was concerned about what appeared to be gross negligence. We immediately followed up with a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (the body charged with enforcing the minimal standards of the Animal Welfare Act), which subsequently opened an inquiry into the lab.

"This is a terrible and unfortunate tragedy," the company said in a statement released to the media. The monkeys were slated to be used in preclinical drug experiments, so Charles River's concern is quite curious. The deaths were written off as the result of "several human errors"—unlike the frequent and intentional monkey murders that preclinical testing laboratories voluntarily participate in.

This accident is only one disgusting incident among many for Charles River's abysmal record. They were cited for 22 violations of the ever-so-minimal standards of the pitifully limited Animal Welfare Act in 2005 alone, and they netted 20 violations (as reported to federal officials) in 2006 and 2007.

Stay tuned to this spot. More's afoot on this front.

Posted by Sean Conner

It's time once again for my PETA Files feature: our Vivisector of the Month contest. Every month, I read up on two of our nation's most vile vivisectors and let you, our dear readers, decide on who is the worst by voting.

Before we begin, I would like to congratulate Michael Weed at Johns Hopkins, who won last month's contest by a landslide. May he forever be recognized for his brilliant work creating a primate crack house—complete with residents infected with the simian form of HIV. Bravo!

What will 17 packs of cigarettes a day do to a monkey? Just ask Marina Picciotto!
CC / My Barina

New Haven, Connecticut, local and Yale professor Marina Picciotto spends her days hidden away in a university laboratory, drugging and tormenting monkeys, mice, and rats—often with the aid of your federal tax dollars! Her chemicals of choice include nicotine, cocaine, morphine, and alcohol—all of which she either feeds or injects into animals before scoring them on bizarre "behavioral assessments," sometimes with the stated goal of making them suffer.

In one study, Picciotto measured despair in mice by making them swim in pools of water with no resting platform or by hanging them from their tails with tape. For each group, despair was measured by how little they were still willing to struggle for self-preservation. In another study, she bored holes into rats' skulls so that she could directly inject chemicals into their brains; she then decapitated the animals and froze their heads. In yet another study, this time on learned helplessness, she exposed mice to 360 inescapable shocks.

Her most stunning experiment involved giving monkeys Kool-Aid mixed with liquid nicotine as a sole source of fluid, with the amount of nicotine ingested by one monkey nearly reaching the equivalent of smoking 17 packs of cigarettes per day. Picciotto conducted this experiment to determine how long one should wait after ingesting nicotine before brain imaging is done, despite the fact that researchers went on to take brain images of human smokers in another experiment that could have provided information without caging and drugging monkeys.

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, resident and Wake Forest assistant professor Allyson Bennett is known for her egregious cruelty to monkeys, but she has also dabbled in torturing rats and mice, making her a great match for Picciotto. Lucky for Bennett, Wake Forest now houses nearly 1,500 monkeys and receives loads of federal funding, so she's unlikely to run out of victims to torment or cash flow to drive her operations.

A queen of seemingly pointless research, Bennett has deprived rats of food for up to two days to observe their consequent behavior in an arena of both food and nonfood objects. To her surprise, food deprivation led animals to come in increased contact with food, despite also inspecting nonfood items out of curiosity. This genius study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and conducted at an NIH Animal Center.

In another study, she took baby monkeys away from their mothers and forced them to grow up without parents—causing them emotional distress just so that she could see how this affected right- or left-hand preference. She's even broken new ground in the research world by investigating whether or not adolescent binge-drinking might be bad for you—if you happen to be a monkey, that is.

Will it be Miss Mouse Depression or the Mistress of Starvation? Leave a comment to let me know!

Do you know the saying "Don't steal—the government hates competition"? I was reminded of it recently when news broke that the U.S. Army is shooting live pigs in an open range with high-power rifles at a training camp in Hawaii. The Army says it's teaching combat medics how to treat battlefield injuries, but here's the thing: The Army is required—by its own regulations—to use alternatives to animals in any kind of experimentation or training when scientifically valid and comparable alternatives exist. And guess what? Those alternatives exist.

My colleague Shalin Gala rattles off these humane alternatives like nobody's business: the Combat Trauma Patient Simulation System, Simulab Corporation's TraumaMan system (insert superhero figure with a T on his chest), partnering with trauma centers for real-life experience, and Dr. Emad Aboud's "living" cadaver perfusion model. Shalin also tells me that he regularly receives calls from whistleblowers in the Army and the Navy telling him about the use of pigs, goats, and monkeys for trauma training and chemical casualty training—all in apparent violation of regulations.

Kathy Guillermo, the director of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department, had this to say: "In order to effectively save our soldiers' lives, Army medics should be trained with human trauma patients and advanced simulators that mimic human responses. Shooting and maiming pigs is as outdated as Civil War rifles."

I agree, but I'm kind of stuck on the fact that the horror of the Army's pig shooting in Hawaii goes way beyond just that. Readers of The PETA Files are well aware that you don't have to be Einstein to get your head around the few paltry regulations intended to protect animals in laboratories, but even so, violations of these regulations are rampant. A recent audit noted that nearly a third of U.S. laboratories are failing to search for alternatives. Is it any wonder when the government—charged with ensuring that laboratories comply with the law—doesn't seem to have its own house in order?

Posted by Grace Friedan

Quick, what happens when you throw a stone in a pond of water? That's right, ripples form. Don't worry, we're not revisiting Physics 101, but that metaphor describes how phenomenal it is to see our actions generate positive consequences.

Check out this stone-skipping scenario: Last fall, an Israeli group videotaped hideously cruel experiments on monkeys and cats that were taking place at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, in which the animals were kept hungry and thirsty so that they would "work" in exchange for a few drops of water. Vivisectors drilled holes in the animals' skulls, inserted electrodes in their brains, and then strapped animals into restraint chairs, where they were kept entirely immobile for hours at a time while data were recorded. These experiments have been going on for more than 20 years, and get this: Our tax dollars—right here in the United States—have been paying for them, courtesy of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

When PETA received the video footage, we sprang into action, writing to the NIH, identifying influential friends who could nudge the Weizmann Institute, and setting up a petition so that concerned people everywhere could tell the Weizmann Institute what they thought.

And now, thanks to the massive outpouring of concern, Israeli academics opposed to cruelty to animals have started organizing and speaking out. Operating under the banner "Academics for the Protection of Animals in Labs," three hundred professors at Israeli universities have signed a petition calling for greater accountability and transparency for animal experimentation. In the words of one organizer, "What I am proposing is that there should be more transparency and supervision, and yes, also fewer experiments ...."

They're not monkeying around, and those are some serious stones!

Posted by Grace Friedan

Gordon Ewy
uanews / CC

First and foremost, I'd like to congratulate Jason Cromer, who won last month's contest by a single vote. I'm so happy to see that the competition was heated last month, and I hope that you'll agree that this month's contestants are equally well matched.

If you love word association, then you're certain to love the conveniently named Michael Weed. His interests include alcohol, morphine, cocaine, ecstacy, and the simian equivalent of HIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, or SIV). And he generously bestows all these wonderful gifts on his monkey friends, who can't fight back.

In one particularly gruesome study funded by the National Institutes of Health, Weed trained monkeys in a basic motor task, infected them with SIV, then checked how they performed the task—while on cocaine. He has also studied SIV in monkeys without going the extra mile of giving them cocaine. One time, for example, he assessed 10 monkeys' performances on memory tests before and after they were infected with SIV. He concluded that his findings matched what was already known from human AIDS patients. Brilliant work, Weed! Even if he'd made stunning new conclusions, would it mean that we should start giving cocaine to people with HIV or that we should warn people with HIV that the white stuff ain't the right stuff?

In another hideous and meaningless study, Weed decided to create opiate dependence in monkeys by giving them a tasty orange-flavored drink spiked with morphine every six hours for several months. Monkey-lovers and M.A.D.D. members alike, please vote for Michael Weed!

If you ever find a pig in cardiac arrest and need to perform CPR, Gordon Ewy would be the man to call. Occupying an endowed chair and serving as director of the University of Arizona's Sarver Heart Center, Ewy has dedicated much of his life to saving pigs' lives (for a brief while, anyway)—after he induces cardiac arrest in them via asphyxiation or other methods.

Ewy's heart-stopping modus operandi typically involves letting his victims sit at a cardiac standstill for eight minutes or more before trying to resuscitate them via different combinations of "chest compressions and assisted ventilation" (i.e., experimental CPR). The success of his methods is measured by the number of pigs who survive, and the number of surviving pigs who retain full brain function after their near-death experiences. In one particularly revealing experiment, Ewy assessed whether chest compressions using stacked hands or side-by-side hands would significantly affect survival. Lo and behold, they did not.

Who will you vote for? Weed, for his extensive work at creating a nonhuman primate crack house, or Ewy, for his life-threatening, "lifesaving" work on pigs? Leave a comment to let me know!

Posted by Sean Conner

foe / CC

In a historic first, the Spanish Parliament is expected to pass legislation that will extend rights to great apes. Yes, you read that right. The resolutions bringing Spanish law in line with the recommendations of the Great Ape Project will not only outlaw experimentation on apes but will also make it illegal to exploit them for films and TV. Boo-ya! The new legislation has been approved by Parliament's environmental committee and has strong enough support that it is expected to become law within a year.

Woo-hoo! Way to go, Spain! Come on, America, what's the dealio?

By the way, if you want to do something for apes and other primates in the U.S. of A. (since we're not going to be able to get them all Spanish visas), be sure to tell your senators to support the Captive Primate Safety Act. Really. Go.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

The Guardian, a U.K.-based newspaper, was recently "granted exclusive and unfettered access" to a super-secret primate testing facility at an undisclosed location and operated by the staff of an undisclosed university. This facility works on marmosets, drilling "tiny" holes in the monkeys' skulls and injecting "minute" amounts of "liquid toxin."

Basically, they—whoever they are—open monkeys' heads up with a drill and pour in some poison. But hey, don't worry about the monkeys—Guardian blogger James Randerson claims they aren't "noticeably affected" by the holes and poison in their heads.

While you can read the whole article here, I would suggest you better spend your time checking out what PETA Europe's Alistair Currie had to say in his response letter:

When James Randerson was shown around a primate laboratory (Report, May 31) did he ask why he was being shown this particular laboratory—and whether his "unfettered" access was the same as seeing what goes on in his absence? Undercover investigations into primate laboratories consistently reveal animal suffering far in excess of what he saw on this official tour, and the research conducted was itself far from typical—most monkeys in the UK are used in pharmaceutical toxicology research. Nor is the attitude of technicians or scientists the point. Whether they are or are not "caring", monkeys don't belong in cages, their brains are not ours to interfere with and this PR exercise was a cynical misrepresentation of a far uglier reality.

And if you're actively searching for a reason to be seriously frustrated for the rest of the day, The Guardian was nice enough to post this audio slideshow in which the tiny monkeys cling to the bars of their cages. Listen closely for the bit about how research staff consider themselves "compassionate professionals"—aren't you curious to know what their definition of a sadist is?

Posted by Sean Conner

If you've idly tossed around the idea of expatriation, this news item will surely send you packing—and practicing your Italian. We've received news that the independent state of San Marino, located entirely within Northeastern Italy, has formally abolished all animal experimentation within its borders. The bill, supported by citizens' signatures and a local animal protection group, was presented in February of this year and has now been signed into law.

Although San Marino is a small state, this is a historic event: San Marino is the very first nation to make all animal testing illegal. Clearly, people (in San Marino and elsewhere) want more sophisticated non-animal methods to be used and find that vivisection is generally abhorrent. In addition to being compassionate for passing this most progressive law, San Marino doesn't have to worry about having an animal-torturing preclinical racket come to town and wreck its local water supply or snatch up its citizens' loved ones.

On behalf of the cats, dogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, monkeys, chimpanzees, pigs, rabbits, sheep, rats, mice, birds, fish, and all other species that are commonly used for research, thank you, San Marino!

-Sean

Posted by Sean Conner

OK, here's the thing: You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand the handful of regulations that govern the treatment of animals in laboratories. What's required of folks who use animals in laboratories is so embarrassingly obvious—animals who are sick or injured need veterinary care, animals who are too ill to be treated should be euthanized, dogs should be exercised, cages should be cleaned, and so on. And yet, vivisectors in labs across the country violate federal law every single day.

Take this situation at Pierce College: A whistleblower has informed PETA that animals are being abused and killed in classroom laboratories by an instructor (Christa Slattery) and her students, in apparent violation of federal animal welfare regulations. The whistleblower told us that Slattery operates her classes like a "free for all," allowing students to poke, prod, bleed, and inject animals with minimum guidance or instruction. And reportedly, when Slattery gets to the animals, it seems that she barely knows what she's doing! The whistleblower told PETA that Slattery tried to push a large mouse into a small tube to restrain the mouse; she wondered whether the tube was too small but just shrugged her shoulders and continued to force the mouse into the tube. Minutes later, the mouse was dead.

Here's what the whistleblower had to say about the matter:

Ms. Slattery's failure to provide detailed guidance in the form of thorough instruction, science-based guidelines, and careful supervision deprives the students in her class of an opportunity to receive adequate training in animal care procedures and leaves the animals used in demonstrations open to neglect, mistreatment, and abuse.

And here's what PETA's director of laboratory investigations told the media today:

Pierce College's veterinary technician program appears to be teaching students that animals' lives don't matter. Slattery's laboratory is apparently in violation of a host of federal regulations, and we're urging the USDA to investigate and force Pierce to comply with animal protection regulations.

If you'd like to write to the veterinary school about this issue, you can do so through the handy Web form here.

—Grace

Posted by Grace Freidan, Researcher

More genius from our good friend Jeff C. Incidentally, we have tons of info available on where to find cruelty-free cosmetics.

Click for a larger version

To check out the archives of past strips, click here.

A frequent PETA Files pastime is to announce some of the country's most gruesome vivisectors. We have a solid lineup of monkey torturers this month, so please mull your choice over carefully. If you have trouble deciding, try to ask yourself: "Would I rather be raised without a mother and literally driven to alcoholism or die convulsing with a hole in my head?"

Stephen Suomi has been tormenting baby monkeys since the '70s. Working for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and living off our tax dollars, he has made a career out of tearing infants away from their mothers and letting them try to raise themselves among peers. Suomi tests the traumatized monkeys for such things as right- or left-handed preferences and tendencies to self-bite. Suomi has also done extensive work with getting motherless monkeys drunk to see how stress and deleterious rearing affects monkeys' desire to drown their sorrows. The connection in humans between early life trauma and an increased attraction to alcohol is also well-known.

Jason Cromer, currently a postdoc at MIT, is definitely a fledgling compared to Suomi, but he has been trained extensively in torturing and killing monkeys by his mentor, David Waitzman at the University of Connecticut, who is known for sticking coils into monkeys' eyes and surgically fixing them to head restraints. According to a cage log, one of Waitzman's monkeys, Cornelius, started convulsing in his restraints during an experiment performed by Cromer. He removed Cornelius' restraints and electrodes and proceeded to drug him as the convulsions developed into grand mal seizures and eventually death.

Who is our most vile vivisector this month—the tried and true NIH employee or the young blood from Connecticut? Leave a comment to let me know!

—Sean

Posted by Sean Conner, Laboratory Investigations Special Projects Coordinator

A not-so-stunning discovery was published in this month's volume of Nature: Mice and men aren't really the same.

In "Regenerative Medicine and Human Models of Human Disease," Kenneth Chien aptly states that much of what we know about human disease has come from animal models—genetically altered mice in particular. This is a worrisome practice when you consider that the goal isn't to cure genetically altered mouse baby boomers but rather genetically not-so-altered humans. "[G]enetically engineered mouse models ... do not necessarily mimic human physiology or precisely recapitulate human disease," Chien writes.

If you had to read that sentence more than once (as I did), here's the idea: mice � humans.

The article then goes on to discuss human models of disease, including human tissues and adult stem cells. This sort of work would completely bypass the classic question that vivisectors have always had to answer: "Sure, you've drugged/cut up a lot of animals, but what good are you doing for people?"

—Sean

Posted by Sean Conner, Laboratory Investigations Special Projects Coordinator

From the category of "No Shit, Sherlock" experiments comes this gem from Yerkes National Primate Research Center. A posse of animal-experimenters, led by vivisector Mark Wilson, has concluded that female monkeys who experience psychological stress will eat excessive amounts of fatty foods.

Really? I wouldn't have guessed that from the way I reach for chocolate peanut-butter brownies instead of broccoli salad when I'm stressed from a looming deadline or a crazy busy schedule. But unlike Yerkes' Wilson, I don't receive grants (read: taxpayer dollars) from the National Institutes of Health to come up with the groundbreaking conclusion that stressed females eat and that the foods we eat when stressed aren't the best for us.

Wilson is right at home at Yerkes, where his coworkers also receive tax dollars up the yin-yang to imprison and abuse monkeys for equally revelatory results. Yerkes' Maria Sanchez removes baby monkeys from their mothers and concludes that the babies become extremely depressed, Stuart Zola has shown that baby monkeys who are taken away from their mothers are more likely to become addicted to drugs, and Michael Davis has proved that motherless monkeys are more prone to feeling fear and anxiety. Your tax dollars hard at work.

—Alka

Posted by Alka Chandna, Laboratory Oversight Specialist

Every so often, there's a pro-animal story so darn cute that the webmasters of ICanHasCheezburger.com get jealous.

According to this piece in the Wrexham Leader, 11-year-old Gaby Trotter seems to have established more as an animal advocate than many adult activists can boast. She managed to research Mars' history of animal testing, set up her own Web site on the subject, and speak to school administrators about banning Mars products in her school.

I think at that age, I was busy playing video games, impressing friends and family members by eating frosted cupcakes in a single bite, and arguing with my sister. Way to raise the standard, Gaby!

—Sean

Posted by Sean Conner, Laboratory Investigations Special Projects Coordinator

askmen / CC

Pam (who also stuck around to lobby the guests alongside PETA VP Dan Mathews at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday) hand-delivered a PETA science report—the impetus for a recent front-page Washington Post story—condemning the failure of the Department of Health and Human Services to use sophisticated, non-animal test methods widely used in Europe, in place of decades-old, cruel and crude animal tests for toxicity. Asked about her decision to act as a courier on PETA’s behalf, she said, "Being a citizen excites me not just because I can vote, but because I can crack the whip on Capitol Hill to defend animals."

And she does it all with a smile. You rule, Pam.

P.S. If you want to help out yourself by contacting your members of Congress about this issue, you can do so through the webform here.

Just so I can complete the perfect trifecta of posts about quirky demonstrations today (see the shower girls and the DC dinosaur in case you missed them), here’s one that involves six businesspeople in one small cage. The purpose of this protest—which took place outside drugmaker Eli Lilly’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday—was to let the company’s shareholders know about its decision to outsource animal experiments to China and other countries where animal protection laws are virtually non-existent.

As a wise man once said, “A man’s crimes against nature aren’t any less disgusting when he pays the Chinese to do them for him.” OK, fine, a wise man didn’t once say that. But he should have. ’Cuz it’s true.

For reals. The thing is about 25 feet tall, all told, and he’s pretty tough to miss (I did a classic double take when I caught a glimpse of him peering through the window when they were setting up in our parking lot for a dry run last week). This big guy was outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services yesterday to remind U.S. government officials that testing on animals is about as progressive as the stone age. Yes, I know that dinos were extinct by the Stone Age, but I would hate to have to explain that to a 25-foot tyrannosaurus. He really does look pretty menacing.

For more info on the campaign that inspired these demonstrations, here’s a recent post about a Paleolithic government entity called ICCVAM, who have been making a royal mess of things for about a decade now.

Well, April is the cruelest month, so this is a perfect time to officially recognize 2008’s cruelest man in academia. Through four grueling rounds against some of the most barbaric men and women in the world, Arthur Weber of MSU has come home with the big prize. Despite a late run by the seasoned group of vivisectors from Duke led by longtime monkey abuser David Platt, Arthur’s team won the final contest with a commanding score of 20 votes to 11.

When asked for comment by the MSU campus newspaper, Weber—who was voted champion largely due to a series of experiments in which he removes cats’ eyes while they’re still alive—made the following statement through a representative:

“The animals are completely anesthetized, receive painkillers, and once the animals come out of the anesthesia, 10 minutes later you can’t tell the difference.”

Awwww, so modest. So self-effacing! But of course you can tell the difference, Arthur! THE CATS ARE MISSING THEIR EYES. And don’t forget the part where you keep them alive for a week after the operation and then kill them—I bet they notice that too!

Anyway, without further ado, please join me in recognizing Arthur Weber of MSU as the people’s choice for the cruelest vivisector in the world! You’ve earned this, Weber.

MSU.edu/Creative Commons

The Washington Post has just released an investigation into the shocking lack of progress that exists in U.S. government policies on animal experimentation. The Washington Post began its own investigation after PETA presented evidence of government negligence. As the article points out, hundreds of millions of animals in this country are still being killed in gruesome ways to test substances like Botox, even though there are modern, non-animal methods available. Part of the problem is a categorical failure by the agency that’s charged with reducing the use of animals in toxicity testing—the folks over at ICCVAM (who I’ve talked about a bit before on this blog)—to actually do their jobs. As the Post article puts it:

"The controversy over the Botox test highlights the slow pace of government efforts to replace or reduce the large numbers of animals used by pharmaceutical companies, chemical manufacturers and consumer firms to ensure that their products are safe for people. A decade after Congress created a panel to spur the development of non-animal tests, only four such tests have been approved out of 185 reviews, according to the panel's records."

During the same period of time, ICCVAM’s European counterpart has recommended more than two dozen non-animal tests, and the U.S. continues to lag well behind Europe in adopting modern alternatives to animal testing, which—in addition to causing unnecessary suffering and death for countless animals—poses a significant threat to human health.

There is a bit of good news, though, in the form of a landmark report by the National Academy of Sciences, which indicates that the United States may finally be ready to start catching up to other nations by adopting modern testing methods. But this isn’t going to happen while groups like ICCVAM are allowed to stand in the way. We’re currently calling for a congressional investigation into ICCVAM's negligence, and asking that a new entity be created to oversee the implementation of the NAS recommendations. If you’d like to help out by contacting your members of Congress about this issue, you can do so through the webform here.

And definitely check out the Post article. This issue is monumentally important, but doesn’t get a lot of ink, so it’s great to see a publication like The Washington Post giving it its due.

We’re almost there, folks. If it’s any consolation, this is just as unpleasant for me as it is for you, but we’ve started this thing, so we need to finish it. Last night, Kansas won a stunner in overtime to take the NCAA basketball title, but our parallel tournament to find the college with the most horrific animal experimentation program has just one last round before we can recognize the winner and go home in disgust. They’ve been through a lot to get here, overcoming an unbelievably tough field of cat killers, monkey maimers, and bunny butchers to reach the finals of this notorious event, so hold your noses and steel yourself for one last dance with the March Mad Scientists … ladies and gentlemen, you voted to see them here; now let’s crown our champion:

MSU.edu/Creative Commons Arthur Weber, Michigan State Arthur Weber and the MSU team have been trouncing the competition so far, and last week’s blowout of Alan Schatzberg and the underperforming Stanford brain butchers (with a score of 12 votes to 0!) has effectively silenced the doubters. Weber’s spent 25 years torturing cats by removing their eyes while they’re still alive, and given MSU’s manhandling of the Stanford team last week, anyone going up against Weber and the Michigan state vivisectors should know that, like the cats who go under Weber’s knife, they're in for a world of pain. Leave a comment below to vote for Arthur Weber and MSU to win it all.

Physorg/Creative Commons Michael Platt, Duke Like MSU, Michael Platt’s Duke team held their opponents scoreless in last week’s semifinal, and their 4-0 victory was more than enough to earn them a place here on the big stage. Platt brings a one-two punch to the fray that’s going to be tough to defend against—his two-pronged approach to vivisecting involves drilling metal screws into monkeys’ skulls and implanting wire coils under their eyelids. Will Platt’s technical expertise with the brain screws be enough to get him past this final hurdle? Only you can decide. Leave a comment below to vote for Michael Platt and the Duke Devils to bring home the title.

Happy voting, and be sure to tune in next week when we crown the winner and take a nostalgic walk back through some of the tournament’s highlights and disappointments.

LightTheNight / CC

Hanna will take the stage for a fun-filled presentation highlighting his many adventures with a mix of DVD clips and inspirational stories about conservation, travel and wildlife. His program includes live animals such as panthers, snow leopards, porcupines, kangaroos and penguins. PSBR will present Jungle Jack Hanna with its “Community Service Award,” for his public support of humane animal based research and outspokenness regarding the positive nature of the field of biomedical research.

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up: Jack Hanna, who’s made a career out of keeping animals confined and dragging them along with him on the talk-show circuit, is giving a “fun-filled” presentation about kangaroos and porcupines frolicking in the wild to a room full of people who professionally advocate for increased animal experimentation. Unbelievable.

Thanks to Genevieve H for the tip, and thanks to Jack Hanna for making my day that much more surreal.

Update: The Lehman monkeys—Wanda, Holly, Jada, Sophie, Samantha, and Lilly—have all arrived safely at a sanctuary and are currently living together as a group. In a little while, they’ll be integrated into a larger group of macaques at the sanctuary. Hooray!

Last month, a whistleblower contacted PETA to tell us that six monkeys who were about to be retired to a sanctuary from City University of New York's Lehman College had instead been sold to New York University for invasive neurological experiments.

The monkeys had originally been used in non-invasive learning and memory experiments in an NIH-funded laboratory overseen by one Dr. Karyl Swartz, who drew up a plan and set aside funds for the monkeys to live out the rest of their lives at a primate sanctuary. Enter the villain of this particular story, a lady named Christina Winnicker, who evidently objected to the plan and asked the experimental oversight committee to keep or sell the monkeys for further experimentation, despite the strong objections of Dr. Swartz and her colleagues. As a result, the monkeys were sold to an NYU laboratory for experiments that would likely have involved removing the tops of their skulls and implanting electrodes in their heads.

Anyway, as you’ve probably guessed from the title here, this one has a happy ending: After asking some pointed questions of both institutions, we received confirmation last week that Lehman College had thought better of their decision to sell these animals to NYU where they may have had their brains butchered. They’re now working with NYU to get them transferred to a sanctuary instead.

Which certainly brightened my day a bit.

Wanda and Jada, before being transferred from the Lehman laboratory.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier, the quest to find the cruelest Division 1 College in the country has revved up a notch! All 16 of last week’s contenders proved tough teams to beat, but only 8 could advance, and despite some powerful showings from Pittsburgh, KSU, Washington State, OSU, Purdue, Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and the University of Washington, only the nastiest can prevail … so without further ado let’s get down to narrowing the field even further as we prepare to put these vivisectors on the national stage in the Fatal Four next week!

Just like last week, I’ll be highlighting what I consider to be the key matchup in this exciting tournament, and you can consult the cheat sheet to help determine who else to vote into the next round. Use the voting form or leave a comment to cast a vote for this week’s Vilest Vivisectors in the Evil Eight!

Duke University vs. Texas A&M

Physorg/Creative Commons Michael Platt, Duke Like ‘em or hate ‘em, Duke University always puts forward a strong team, and for the past decade, that’s been largely due to the work of their MVP, Michael Platt, who drills metal screws into monkeys’ skulls, pushes electrodes into their brains, and implants wire coils under their eyelids. A similar winning technique has been made popular by UConn’s David Waitzman—another strong contender in this tournament, so if we’re lucky, we may see a classic Big East/ACC showdown in the finals this year. The published results of Mr. Platt’s cruel experiments include such timeless pieces of knowledge as the fact that one rhesus macaque monkey will often look in the same direction as another rhesus macaque monkey, so there’s no question that Michael’s earning his keep! To vote for Michael Platt, use the form or leave a comment below.

TAMU/Creative Commons Michelle Hook, Texas A&M Texas A&M might traditionally be the underdog in this matchup, but don’t make the mistake of underestimating Michelle Hook of Texas A&M University’s Department of Psychology. Her medium of choice is rats, and from the sounds of it, there’s not much she hasn’t done when it comes to slicing and dicing these animals. Michelle’s preferred technique involves cutting up the animals’ spinal cords, injecting them with chili pepper solution, pushing them into restraint tubes, and electroshocking their hind legs. Hook’s world-beating conclusion speaks for itself: “These data suggest that peripheral inflammation, accompanying spinal cord injuries, might have an adverse effect on recovery.” You heard it here first, folks: Giving electric shocks to torture victims might slow down their recovery time! To vote for Michelle Hook, use the form or leave a comment below.

If you guessed 25,703, you’re exactly right! I’ve got some more statistics for you, too, because I wanted to provide some concrete numbers to give a bit of context to this photo, which recently won The National Geographic International Photography Contest. The deeply disturbing image, which shows caged monkeys awaiting their fate at a medical laboratory in Hubei Province, China, depicts one small part of a nightmare that continues every day for thousands of primates who are used in barbaric, wasteful experiments. Some stats:

China, where the award-winning photo was taken, was the source of nearly 58 percent of all primates imported into the U.S.

More than 46 percent of all primates brought to this country were imported by Covance. Covance was also responsible for all 25 of the largest shipments of primates (200 or more) into the U.S.

Just three companies – huge, multi-national contract testing organizations that conduct animal experiments for profit – account for more than 75 percent of primate imports for 2007:

1. Covance: 11,935 (46.43 percent)
2. Charles River: 6,140 (23.89 percent)
3. SNBL: 2,400 (9.34 percent)

Close to 98 percent of all primates imported into this country are macaque monkeys, like those shown in the photo. These monkeys are imported strictly for vivisection.

And the photo itself is a doozy.

Not even kidding. According to The Austin American Statesman, grief counselors were made available to employees of the University of Texas Keeling Animal Research Center after an adult chimpanzee who escaped from the experimentation facility was shot and killed near the campus. Anyone else find it odd that employees of a facility that cages animals and performs cruel experiments on them against their will would need specialists to comfort them when the animals die due to their facility’s negligence?

PETA filed a formal complaint today, calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate the laboratory for alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including failure to ensure that personnel are qualified to perform their duties and failure to provide structurally sound housing for nonhuman primates. Here’s what PETA Primate Specialist Dr. Debra Durham told the media:

"Chimpanzees are intelligent, sensitive, and resourceful—they shouldn't be incarcerated in laboratories in the first place. Research on chimpanzees is banned in many countries. The very least that this laboratory can do is ensure that these animals have safe living spaces."

Which doesn’t seem to be happening at the moment, given that this is the second chimpanzee escape from the facility in the past six months. You’d almost think these animals don’t want to be there.

Maybe they can send in a team of basic human decency counselors along with the grief folks. Just a thought.

Photo from Covance Investigation

The AP story points out that human waste and animal waste from factory farms contaminates water with drugs, but back in July 2006, PETA discovered that animal laboratories are also contaminating water with pharmaceuticals. Our report showed that at places like Covance, animals are pumped full of massive quantities of test drugs that still haven’t even been approved by the FDA. The animals pass some of the drugs out of their bodies when they pee and poop and this waste is hosed down the drain–toxic drugs and all–and ends up in our water supply.

Now with all the attention on water safety, we’re doing our best to convince Chandler, Arizona (where we've been working with activists on this issue for some time now) to not let a Covance facility set up shop in their city.

Check out this awesome letter that our senior researcher Alka sent to Chandler, Arizona, and check out our official PETA report on this issue too.

This could be a great victory for animals if we can convince residents and government officials in Chandler, Arizona, not to allow this hellhole in their city! Thanks to Alka and the anti-vivisection team for all their hard work!

Love,

Christine <3

Alistair Currie, the Senior Research and Campaigns Coordinator for PETA UK has an amazing piece in The New Statesman this week about the ethics of animal experimentation. If you’ve got a few minutes, you should definitely check that bad boy out. For some reason, there’s also a poll on the page asking whether “24-hour drinking is bad for society,” but I don’t recommend voting on it. It’s not particularly fulfilling.

Anyway, you can read Alistair’s great piece here. Lemme know what you think.

Of course, they could have just asked us. But this recent finding by the US National Research Council is very good news for animals suffering in laboratories. According to the study,

"Recent advances in systems biology, testing in cells and tissues, and related scientific fields offer the potential to fundamentally change the way chemicals are tested for risks they may pose to humans. …The new approach would generate more-relevant data to evaluate risks people face, expand the number of chemicals that could be scrutinised, and reduce the time, money, and animals involved in testing."

I guess research councils take longer than the rest of us to figure out that animals just don't work the same way as humans, but it's great to see that they've finally figured it out. You can read The Daily Telegraph's take on the study here, and for those of you with a more academic disposition—or just a whole lot of time on your hands—the full study is available here.

Just weeks after Pepsi announced that it would stop testing on animals, Coca-Cola has sent a letter to PETA announcing that it will no longer fund or conduct animal experiments. Coke had something of a history of invasive animal experimentation—including cutting open chimpanzees’ faces in order to conduct taste tests and force-feeding chemicals to rodents to test “caramel color”—so this compassionate decision by the company is a huge step forward, and it sends a powerful message to all companies that still test on animals about how a responsible, progressive company does business. Here's what Coca-Cola's senior vice president, Danny Strickland, said in his letter to us announcing the company's decision:

“The Coca-Cola Company does not conduct animal tests and does not directly fund animal tests on its beverages. … We are sending letters to our partners and research organizations who may conduct safety evaluations on … ingredients insisting they use alternatives to animal testing ….”

Strickland also talked about a deadly physiology test on taste reception in rats that PETA had discovered Coca-Cola was funding through the year 2008, saying, “Recently senior management became aware that research involving rats was being conducted as part of a grant we had funded at Virginia Commonwealth University to study taste reception. We have contacted the University and have discontinued our funding.” This is a big victory for animals and an encouraging sign that animal experimentation is rapidly on its way to becoming another chapter in the history of severely messed-up stuff we wish we had never thought of in the first place.

Have you heard about this? It’s a pretty amazing story out of the UK about researchers at Queen Mary's School of Medicine in London, who developed a unique three-dimensional model of human breast cancer in a test tube. Pretty cool.

Mice are not test tubes with whiskers . . .

This development has the potential to save countless animals from horrible suffering, and it also has amazing potential to save human lives, since the results will actually be applicable to curing cancer in humans, unlike animal experiments.

Hats off to the Queen Mary’s researchers who came up with this exciting new breakthrough. It puts us one step closer to a world without animal testing . . .