David Gozal
louisville / CC

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

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

Daniel Traber of the University of Texas Medical Branch Department of Anesthesiology has made a living for almost three decades by burning animals' skin off. In a recent experiment, he either torched mice with a Bunsen burner until more than 40 percent of their bodies was charred or forced them to inhale smoke. A few select mice got the full treatment—they were both burned and forced to inhale smoke. Some died during the experiment, and survivors were subsequently killed.

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

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