University of Delaware’s Twisted Test on Rats Put on Blast in New PETA TV Spot

New Nongraphic Pixar-Style Ad Illustrates World From Mouse’s Point of View

For Immediate Release:
November 18, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Because University of Delaware experimenter Tania Roth has injected baby rats with opioids, stuffed pregnant mothers into cramped restraint tubes and blasted them with strobe lights, and electrically shocked infant rats in cruel “child abuse” studies, PETA is running a new TV ad showing the world from a rodent’s perspective.

The nongraphic spot—made in partnership with 160over90, an Endeavor company—features an adorable cartoon mouse mixing chemicals in his laboratory classroom in the forest and proclaims, “Animals experimenting are cute. Experimenting on animals isn’t.” The ad, rejected by CBS, will run this Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. and Thursday at 8:26 a.m. on FOX29 during Good Day Philadelphia.

“PETA’s new ad will remind people that mice and rats are thinking, feeling beings who deserve to live and that they don’t belong to humans to be abused and killed,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Viewers will see immediately that Tania Roth has robbed animals of everything that’s natural and important to them so that she can torment them in hideous tests that have failed to produce a single treatment for abused children.”

Studies show that 90% of basic research—most of which involves experiments on animals—doesn’t lead to treatments for humans. Government officials also admit that 95% of all new drugs that test safe and effective on animals fail in human trials, either because they simply don’t work or because they cause adverse effects.

Since 2000, Roth has spent nearly $2 million in public funds tormenting animals. Her other procedures have included taking newborn rats away from their mothers and giving them to stressed females who, unequipped to care for the babies, stepped on, dropped, dragged, and ignored them. Her latest set of experiments involved subjecting mother rats to invasive surgeries just one day after they gave birth. And she allowed them only one day of recovery from surgery before she began administering drugs directly into their brain on a daily basis. One week after giving birth, the mother rats were killed and dissected.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.