Giant ‘Mouse’ and More Than 30 PETA Supporters Protest NIH-Funded Experiments in D.C. (Photos)
A giant mutilated “mouse” and more than 30 PETA supporters greeted staff at the Department of Health & Human Services in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to protest wasteful experiments on animals. With signs proclaiming, “Sepsis Tests: Mice Suffer, No Human Benefits,” the protesters called on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to stop funding painful—and pointless—sepsis experiments on mice.
PETA members also screened graphic video footage of a procedure recently used in a sepsis experiment at the University of Virginia. The video, posted below, shows a pair of mice who were sewn together so that they shared a bloodstream. They were given a severe infection, leading to sepsis.
The procedure depicted in the video above, in which two mice are surgically joined so that they share a bloodstream, was performed at the University of California, Los Angeles. A similar procedure was performed on mice in the UVA experiment.
Passersby were shocked to learn of the extreme cruelty and huge misuse of taxpayer dollars going to cruel and useless mouse sepsis experimentation. Sepsis—a life-threatening condition in which the body turns on itself—produces symptoms that include agonizing pain, difficulty breathing, fever, chills, multi-organ failure, and often death.
A 2013 landmark study documented that sepsis experiments on mice don’t yield information relevant to humans. At the time, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins lamented the “loss of decades of research and billions of dollars” in the development of 150 drugs that successfully treated sepsis in mice but failed in humans—but inexplicably, NIH has since awarded more than $212 million in federal funding for such experiments.
NIH is squandering limited health resources by funneling money into these worthless and wasteful studies while humans continue to die from sepsis. PETA is calling for all federal funding to be redirected from these hideously cruel experiments into useful and humane research.
Please Speak Up for Mice
You, too, can help stop these painful and useless experiments. Click the button below to write a letter to NIH urging it to stop wasting taxpayer money and allowing animals to suffer. Tell it to end all funding of sepsis experiments on mice now:
