Dancing ‘Crapstick’ to Protest Pfizer’s Animal Tests

PETA Will Call On Company to Ban Near-Drowning Tests on Mice

For Immediate Release:
October 9, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Led by a giant dancing “CrapStick,” a group of PETA supporters will descend on the midtown headquarters of Pfizer—the maker of ChapStick—and call on the company to ban the widely discredited forced swim (or “despair”) test.

When:    Thursday, October 10, 12 noon

Where:    Pfizer, 235 E. 42nd St. (between Second and Third avenues), New York

During this test, mice and other small animals are placed in inescapable beakers filled with water and made to swim to keep from drowning, purportedly to shed light on human depression. The test is less accurate than a coin toss in determining the effectiveness of antidepressant medications. Pfizer has used at least 1,270 mice and rats in such experiments, and in the 18 years that publications show that the company has used the test, it hasn’t led to any marketable drugs to treat human depression.

“Nearly drowning mice teaches us nothing about human depression—it just teaches us that experimenters have boundlessly cruel imaginations,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on Pfizer to join Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, and other leading pharmaceutical companies in ditching the forced swim test in favor of advanced, animal-free research methods that might actually help human patients.”

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.