Rabbits Mutilated, Monkeys Driven Mad in University Labs

Deep inside the laboratories of the University of Pittsburgh, thousands of animalsincluding mice, monkeys, dogs,cats, rats, and rabbitsare cut open, injected with chemicals, and killed for a wide variety of experiments. Unfortunately, this abuse is far from unusual. PETA has exposed dozens of animal laboratories over the years, just like this one, and the misery that you see here isnt the exception. Its the rule.

Time and again, weve seen experimenters treat animals like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment. This is suffering, loneliness, and desperation. This is animal experimentation in the United States. Some monkeys were restrained in chairs, their heads clamped into vise-like metal collars.

Others in cages slowly lost their mindspacing, rocking, and displaying other repetitive behavior. This monkey pressed his hand to his head so often that he reportedly developed a bruise. Another monkey who desperately tried to escape confinement eluded his tormenters for three hours before being caught. A plastic surgeon, Sandeep Kathju, cut into rabbits legs and contorted them in order to cause trauma to the ligaments.

Wires inserted in their knees held their legs in this painful position for eight weeks. Rabbits used in this experiment lost significant weight, indicating chronic pain and distress. An experimenter named Rajesh Aneja punctured the intestines of these mice so that harmful bacteria would leak out into their abdomens, causing painful septic shock. Another experimenter, Ira Fox, injected rats with a chemical to make their livers fail.

These rats and mice endured a painful, prolonged death. Experimenter Gregory Cooper deliberately breeds rabbits so that their babies will have malformed skulls and misaligned teeth. The infants, such as Tiny Tim, who developed an infection following surgery, and Tully, who was discovered with three broken incisures, suffer almost constantly. When these mice couldnt, or wouldnt, drink water laced with an antibiotic, many slowly died of dehydration.

The desperate survivors cannibalized their bodies. Mice only exhibit this kind of behavior in extremely stressful or life-threatening situations, just as humans have also been known to do. Many animals at the University of Pittsburgh were deprived of adequate veterinary care. One mother rabbit died after a worker failed to report her stroke-like symptoms.

The laboratory didnt have any rabbit formula, and her hungry babies were euthanized and their bodies harvested for samples. When this rabbit developed an abscess, a veterinarian cut into it and pressed on it for over 10 minutes, putting the rabbit through agony before fully anesthetizing her. This monkey was bitten on the hand, all the way down to the tendons, but a veterinarian reportedly refused even to look at the wound. Many mice suffered from painful sores that could easily have been prevented.

Animals were even denied a painless death. Mice were crammed into crowded enclosures that were then filled with carbon dioxide. These newborn mice were stuffed into a plastic bag to be gassed to death. Mice drowned or died of hypothermia when their cage flooded.

This is the misery that PETA sees time and time again in government funded animal laboratories. The University of Pittsburgh received more than $475 million from the National Institutes of Health in 2016 alone. And much of that money was spent tormenting and killing animals. Scientists and other experts agree: Experimenting on animals is wasteful, archaic, and cruel.

PETA is working with top scientists and governments around the world to put an end to this cruelty, but we need your help. Tell the National Institutes of Health to stop wasting your tax dollars on cruel and wasteful experiments on animals and to fund modern, effective, non-animal research methods instead..