PETA has opposed experiments on animals from its earliest days because they're not only cruel but also unscientific. A few weeks ago, we told you about a government report highlighting the irrelevance of cruel experiments on chimpanzees. Now, a momentous study published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) offers further proof that experiments on other animals don't help humans. The report's authors conclude that the results of sepsis and burn experiments on mice—like those performed at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB)—cannot be applied to human beings, so their use represents a massive waste of time, money, and lives.

Bitter Medicine Is Hard to Swallow

The groundbreaking PNAS study took 10 years to complete and involved 39 researchers from institutions across the continent, including Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. As The New York Times reports, those scientists "report stunning evidence that the mouse model has been totally misleading for at least three major killers—sepsis, burns and trauma. As a result, years and billions of dollars have been wasted following false leads. … [The study] helps explain why every one of nearly 150 drugs tested at huge expense in patients with sepsis has failed. The drug tests all were based on studies in mice. And mice, it turns out, have a disease that looks like sepsis in humans, but is very different from the human disease." The researchers discovered the discrepancy after conducting humane, modern studies on cells from hundreds of human patients. Regarding the experiments on animals, the study's lead author stated, "[Researchers] are so ingrained in trying to cure mice that they forget we are trying to cure humans."

One of the forces behind the UTMB studies is Shriners International, which for years has funded cruel burn and sepsis experiments on mice, dogs, and other animals at UTMB and elsewhere and continues to do so even today. One UTMB experimenter, Daniel Traber, soaked up money for years in exchange for burning animals' skin off. In one experiment uncovered by PETA, Traber torched mice with a Bunsen burner until more than 40 percent of their bodies were charred or forced them to inhale smoke—or both. The mice who survived this torture were finally killed.

What You Can Do

Please join PETA in urging Shriners International to pull its funding of these cruel and wasteful experiments in light of the damning new report of their fatal flaws.

Update: Based on PETA complaints documenting abuse and neglect of animals in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston's laboratories, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken the rare step of fining the facility $9,143 for egregious violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act—including failing to supply veterinary care to a sheep who had been used in experimental back surgery and could not stand up, failing to supply adequate veterinary care to a goat who died on an operating table, and failing to supply post-procedural pain relief to three sheep used in experimental surgeries.

What do you do when a judge rules that your experiments on animals violated state law and you're in jeopardy of losing government funding for the cruel project? Well, if you're the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), you try to hide the painful and illegal decompression experiments on sheepby disguising them as another project in order to keep the gravy train flowing. In the U.S. Navy–funded experiment, sheep were confined to high-pressure hyperbaric chambers and forced to endure crippling joint pain, seizures, nausea, paralysis, vomiting, burning, deep chest pain and in some cases, death.

PETA has obtained internal documents from UW showing that school lawyers, administration, and faculty met and discussed rewriting the project description "to avoid the legal problems that the previous study caused."  Even though the experiment still risked killing sheep by decompression in violation of the law, members of the UW animal experimentation oversight committee considered reapproving the project and actually directed the experimenter to rewrite the description to eliminate the terms "decompression" and "death." Other documents PETA obtained suggest that UW knew that these experiments were illegal for more than two decades. Thankfully, the project was ultimately not reapproved, and it remains on ice to this day. PETA has turned over all its findings to the special prosecutor who is considering filing charges against UW in this case. 

Burn experiments on pigs at UTMB

 
In another ongoing case, the Texas attorney general has ordered the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) to surrender to PETA numerous documents related to experiments at the school, including studies in which Bunsen burners and hot metal rods are used to inflict third-degree burns on animals (some of whom suffered burns on up to 40 percent of their bodies). UTMB had repeatedly denied PETA the documents, trying to evade public-records laws. PETA has already filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture about the abuses and will use the documents to further expose how animals are forced to suffer in laboratories at UTMB.

You can help by sending an e-mail to UTMB’s president, asking him to investigate the school’s laboratories and dismiss employees who are abusing animals.  

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Update: Based on PETA complaints documenting abuse and neglect of animals in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston's laboratories, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken the rare step of fining the facility $9,143 for egregious violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act—including failing to supply veterinary care to a sheep who had been used in experimental back surgery and could not stand up, failing to supply adequate veterinary care to a goat who died on an operating table, and failing to supply post-procedural pain relief to three sheep used in experimental surgeries.

Update: After reviewing our evidence, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected UTMB’s laboratories and confirmed our findings of multiple Animal Welfare Act violations.

A whistleblower at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has contacted PETA to report horrifying—and potentially illegal—abuses of dogs, sheep, monkeys, mice, and other animals who were tormented for experiments in the school's laboratories.

The insider reported that as a result of experiments in which dogs were cut open and had tubes surgically implanted in their colons, one dog died during surgery and another suffered in pain and died when staff members didn't provide post-operative painkillers. UTMB experimenters also induced spinal cord and nerve damage in sheep, and in one instance, a sheep apparently couldn't stand for three days following surgery and was given no pain relief. Mice apparently died from dehydration, and a monkey was locked in a room all by himself, even though monkeys require social contact with other members of their species to maintain sanity and physical health.

In other procedures conducted in this hellhole, experimenter Daniel Traber subjected sheep, pigs, and mice to third-degree burns on up to 40 percent of their bodies by searing off their skin with a Bunsen burner or a scorching-hot metal rod and forced the animals to inhale smoke.  

PETA has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling for an immediate investigation into these disturbing allegations. You can help by sending an e-mail to UTMB President David L. Callender urging him to investigate these allegations and, if abuses are confirmed, to discipline those responsible.

Written by Michelle Sherrow