One danger faced by dogs and cats who are left outside or turned over to disreputable animal shelters is that they could wind up in the hands of Class B dealers, people who profit by acquiring "random source" animals and selling them to laboratories for use in cruel and deadly experiments. Now, a bill before Congress, the federal Pet Safety and Protection Act of 2011, would outlaw the seedy underworld of Class B dealers and end the trafficking of lost, abandoned, and stolen animals in the vivisection industry.

Such a law is long overdue. A 2010 congressional report stated that Class B dealers have been violating the law for many years, including mistreating animals and even fraudulently obtaining them from unknowing citizens looking to place cats and dogs into loving homes. In fact, five of the eight active Class B dealers in the country are currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their continued violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Even as these businesses flout the law, they are allowed to continue profiting off the backs of homeless animals with the endorsement of the U.S. government.

Please, never give unwanted animals away to strangers or let your dogs or cats roam outside alone. Click here to urge your representatives in Congress to support the federal Pet Safety and Protection Act of 2011, which would stop Class B dealers from profiting off the suffering of animals.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

Friday marked an inspiring victory for pigs, who were routinely being cut apart, surgically mutilated, and killed as part of an elective medical training course at Germany's University of Ulm. Just two hours after PETA Germany asked supporters to contact university officials, the university announced that it would be permanently ending the pig lab!

Medical students and doctors at the university were performing invasive surgeries on live pigs, including cutting out their gallbladders, removing part of their stomachs and livers, and cutting holes in their chests. Using live animals is a crude and archaic method of teaching surgery, and more and more leading institutions have adopted the use of sophisticated human simulators in place of animals. In fact, the use of animals for this purpose appears to violate German law, which requires the use of non-animal teaching methods whenever they are available.

PETA U.S. assisted PETA Germany by drafting a comprehensive brief for University of Ulm officials that described humane, non-animal options for teaching the procedures that students were performing on pigs.

While the University of Ulm is modernizing its curriculum, here at home, the  Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) still mutilates and kills live pigs in trauma training exercises by cutting holes in their throats and chests, despite the availability of superior, non-animal training methods. Tell MUSC President Raymond Greenberg to end the barbaric training exercises on animals immediately.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

Even without a big striped hat, our mischievous cat shook things up at the St. Louis Children's Hospital gala this past weekend. Dressed to the nines in a bowtie and tails, the cat grabbed the attention of the gala attendees while his fellow protesters handed out information about the hospital's abuse of cats for cruel and archaic intubation training exercises in its Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course.

The leaflets were, unfortunately, not works of children's fiction. Trainees at St. Louis Children's force hard plastic tubes down cats' delicate windpipes over and over again in a procedure that can cause bleeding and swelling in the tissue of the cats' throats as well as pain, scarring, collapsed lungs, and even death. One gala attendee exclaimed, "Are they really doing this? I have a cat at home. This is horrible!"

Readily available infant simulators have been shown to better prepare trainees to treat sick and injured babies and children. Even the PALS course's sponsor, the American Heart Association, strongly opposes animal use in the course. The group has distanced itself from the few facilities that still use animals and only recommends the use of simulators.

If you do not like it, not one little bit, take a minute to tell Saint Louis Children's Hospital to stop abusing cats and better serve children by switching to modern, superior human-patient simulators. 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

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In an ironic twist in the Michael Jackson manslaughter trial, Dr. Conrad Murray's defense team has reportedly commissioned tests on animals in an apparent effort to dispute charges that the doctor killed the King of Pop, who was famous for his love of animals.

According to news reports, Murray's lawyer, J. Michael Flanagan, revealed "in open court that he had commissioned his own study about the oral ingestion of [p]ropofol." A source close to Murray told RadarOnline.com, "A study was done on [b]eagle dogs to determine how much [p]ropofol would have to be orally consumed to cause death. … The study definitely involved more than two dogs. It's unknown if the dogs died or suffered any harm."

In toxicology tests, large doses of chemicals are pumped into dogs' bodies, slowly poisoning them. Not only are these tests cruel and irrelevant to human health, they are also redundant because substantial data are publicly available about the oral toxicity of propofol in dogs, humans, and other animals. The tests are also in potential violation of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which prohibits procedures on animals that "unnecessarily duplicate previous experiments."

PETA has filed a complaint with the State Bar of California and is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to also investigate how and why the cruel test reportedly commissioned by Murray's defense team was approved and to issue citations and fines for any violations of the AWA. We will keep you updated as the case progresses.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

This year, trainees at the National Association of Neonatal Nurses (NANN) educational conference were better educated on how to care for newborns than they have ever been before, with help from PETA.

Previously, neonatal nurses in the course were taught emergency techniques such as inserting tubes into umbilical blood vessels, draining fluid from the chest cavity, and extracting spinal fluid by performing the procedures on fetal pigs, whose anatomy is very different from that of a human infant. But because of a generous donation of 30 newborn-patient simulators from PETA and one of our supporters, the McGrath Family Foundation of San Diego, the nurses are now learning the procedures by practicing on human anatomy instead.

NANN Director of Education Steve Biddle noted, "PETA's donation of medical simulators allows us to take our neonatal training program to the next level, above and beyond what we were able to achieve using animals."

Since NANN is recognized as an expert voice in neonatal nursing that influences standards of practice in the field, we hope that other training programs for nurses that still use animals will be inspired to switch to modern simulators as well.

You can help support the replacement of animal laboratories with modern patient simulators and other methods by donating to PETA's Investigations & Rescue Fund

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Now that a debt-ceiling compromise has been reached in Washington, Congress faces the task of slashing more than $1 trillion in spending over the next decade. So which government-funded programs should get the ax? PETA is suggesting cutting the $16 billion spent annually on animal experiments.

A good place to start would be the cruel "Mr. Potato Head" experiments on baby monkeys conducted by Kevin Grove at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, which have cost taxpayers more than $8 million, including an additional $94,000 in support from the Obama stimulus package. This Vivisector of the Month awardee spends his days terrorizing baby monkeys with things that scare them, such as Mr. Potato Head dolls, to see if babies of monkeys fed unhealthy, high-fat diets are more scared than those of monkeys who ate healthy diets. Hello--does anyone not know by now that junk food is bad for you?

You can see the ridiculous and cruel experiments for yourself in this never-before-seen video footage that PETA has obtained from ONPRC:
 

 
PETA has written to several key members of Congress, including those charged with appointing members to the super committee that will study where to make spending cuts, to suggest that the government could save billions every year by halting funding for these and other cruel and pointless experiments.

You can help by e-mailing your senators and representatives and asking them to spend your money on something other than tormenting animals.

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow

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The skies just got friendlier for primates of the nonhuman variety. American Airlines has publicly confirmed that it will no longer transport nonhuman primates to be used in experiments. In adding cruelty to its no-fly list, American Airlines joins British Airways, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Qantas, Delta Air Lines, Air China, Monarch Air Group, Amerijet, IBC Airways, and several other airlines in refusing to transport primates to facilities where they will be tormented and killed in experiments.

You may also recall that Lufthansa airlines agreed last year to stop transporting dogs and cats to laboratories after a PETA action alert generated an enormous response from concerned people.

You can help stop laboratory abuse at its source by asking the federal government to divert funding from cruel experiments on animals to modern non-animal methods and human-based clinical research.
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

In his new movie Project Nim, which opens today in New York City and Chicago, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker James Marsh explores the tragic life of a chimpanzee, Nim Chimpsky, and the people who exploited him for their own selfish ends.

Born in a laboratory in the 1970s, Nim was taught American Sign Language as part of a project to show that it could be done. But that was just the beginning of Nim's odyssey. He was shuffled between homes, kept segregated from his own species, often caged and tethered, and eventually dumped onto a series of laboratories. Animal rights advocates fought to have him retired to a sanctuary and, for those of you who plan to see the movie, here's a spoiler alert: They were ultimately successful.

While Nim did learn sign language, the truly important lesson that he taught us is that nonhuman primates, like all other animals, desire and deserve the same freedom that human primates enjoy and that depriving them of it is devastating. Why, 30 years later, have we still not learned that lesson?

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow

UPDATE: Statement released from Brookhaven National Laboratory: "NASA has informed Brookhaven that a proposal involving primate research at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory on the Brookhaven Lab site should be removed from consideration for experimental time at the facility."

Well, folks, you did it. After scores of protests and more than 100,000 letters, phone calls, and e-mails from PETA supporters—including some high-profile allies, such as Sir Paul McCartney,  Bob Barker, Alicia Silverstone, members of Congress, and even a former NASA astronaut and engineer—the space agency has quietly called off plans to conduct cruel radiation experiments on monkeys. 

Thanks in large part to your efforts, dozens of squirrel monkeys have been given an early Christmas gift and will be spared from receiving harmful doses of radiation and then being isolated in cages and subjected to years of behavioral experiments to measure the damage caused by the radiation. Such damage likely would have included brain damage, cataracts, cancerous tumors, loss of motor control, and early death.

Way to go, team—you can be over the moon on this one!

Written by Alisa Mullins

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photos/zoomzoom/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

PETA's savvy legal team never stops uncovering new ways to expose the ugly business of vivisection. The Wall Street Journal, The Scientist, Nature Medicine, and an ABC News affiliate have all recently done pieces about our innovative approach to exposing the torment that animals are forced to endure in laboratories.

PETA has recently filed lawsuits against the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Maryland–Baltimore for allegedly violating public records laws by withholding documents related to experiments in which holes are drilled into animals' skulls and others in which animals are given electric shocks to their tongues when they take a sip of water. We're also using a rarely invoked Wisconsin law to petition a judge to allow for prosecution of University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty members and administrators who have violated state law by subjecting sheep to painful and deadly decompression experiments.

The biggest fear for those who imprison, cut up, burn, shock, and poison animals for a living is exposure. We'll continue to find and use every available legal avenue to make sure that laboratory doors are thrown wide open. Those responsible for harming animals must know that they are not above the law and that they will be held accountable in courtrooms—or at least in the court of public opinion. Please join our fight.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor