NIH’a Bizarre Sex Experiments on Animals Need to Go, Says PETA

Cruel and Deadly Procedures Called Out as a Colossal Waste of Taxpayer Millions

For Immediate Release:
December 2, 2013

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Cutting the skin off live mice’s penises, sexually stimulating hamsters after cutting holes in their skulls, and watching rats copulate are just a few of the senseless and horrific experiments PETA has discovered that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding with more than $12 million in public funds.

In a letter sent today to the NIH, PETA calls for funding to be cut from the projects, which have involved damaging the sexual pleasure area of animals’ brains, sexually stimulating them, mutilating their genitals, and recording their sexual behavior.  PETA has also created a video about the campaign and posted an alert on its website allowing visitors to contact the NIH directly to call for an end to the experiments.

“Mutilating and killing animals in twisted sex experiments is a colossal waste of animal life and public money,” says PETA Director of Laboratory Investigations Justin Goodman. “When sequestration means the NIH has cut funds for truly lifesaving and cutting edge human-based research, absolutely no argument can be made to conduct curiosity-based, sexual mutilations on animals.”

The current NIH-funded experiments cited by PETA in its letter to the agency include the following:

• Johns Hopkins University received $2,792,144 to cut all the skin off live mice’s and rats’ penises, electrically stimulate the organs for five minutes, and inject the animals with chemicals to see if they could sustain an erection.
• Boston University received $1,505,173 to drill holes into female mice’s skulls, burn lesions into their brains, and record the amount of time the mice spent sniffing male rats’ urine samples. The animals were then killed.
• The University of California–Berkeley received $1,817,502 to cut holes into female hamsters’ skulls, pump hormones into their brains, sexually stimulate them with brushes, and measure their sexual receptivity.
• The Mount Sinai School of Medicine received $4,547,605 to block rats’ ability to process sexual pleasure using chemicals, observe the animals copulating, and measure how withholding sex increased the rats’ interest in amphetamines. The experiments were conducted at the University of Michigan.
• Texas Woman’s University received $2,024,949 to remove rats’ ovaries, inject the animals with antidepressants and sex hormones, and observe their sexual behavior.

For more information, visit PETA.org.