Rat Experimenter to Speak at MSU Symposium, Sparking PETA Protest

PETA Supporters Will Call For an End to Panelist Tania Roth’s Torment of Baby Rats in Taxpayer-Funded ‘Child Abuse’ Studies

For Immediate Release:
May 6, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Armed with signs proclaiming, “Tania Roth Abuses Babies,” a group of PETA supporters will descend on Michigan State University (MSU) on Tuesday as University of Delaware (UD) experimenter Tania Roth prepares to take the stage at MSU’s mini-symposium “Epigenetic Stress Memory.”

When:    Tuesday, May 7, 3:30 p.m.

Where:    Michigan State University, Molecular Plant Sciences Building, Rm. 1200, 1066 Bogue St. (near the intersection with Wilson Road), East Lansing

Since 2000, Roth has spent nearly $2 million in public funds on “child abuse studies” on baby rats. In addition to performing other procedures, she’s injected baby rats with opioids and force-fed them alcohol, stuffed pregnant mothers into tiny restraint tubes and blasted them with strobe lights, and electrically shocked infant rats.

“For nearly two decades, Tania Roth has tormented vulnerable rats in cruel experiments that have failed to produce a single treatment for abused children,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA is calling for an end to these merciless studies, which are squandering our country’s precious public health dollars.”

PETA (whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”) opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist viewpoint that other species are nothing more than commodities to be used—for example, as laboratory equipment. The group’s previous efforts to end Roth’s tests include preparing a scientific and veterinary critique of the experiments, filing complaints with federal authorities, expressing concerns to UD’s Board of Trustees, protesting on the UD campus, and enlisting the help of actor Edie Falco to speak out against the experiments.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.