Pitt Ranked Among Worst Animal Testing Offenders

PETA’s Interactive ‘Failed Tests’ Resource Calls Out School for Using Thousands of Animals in Cruel Experiments

For Immediate Release:
September 3, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

As the new school year begins at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), PETA is alerting students to its new interactive feature, “Failed Tests,” which ranks colleges as “bad,” “worse,” or “worst” for animals—and Pitt, which used dozens of dogs and cats, more than 900 rabbits, nearly 700 monkeys, and thousands of mice and rats in experiments last year, is among the “worst.”

Pitt received more than $536 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2018, nearly half of which has gone toward animal experiments. In one taxpayer-funded study, experimenters addicted mice to cocaine and restrained them in narrow, cone-shaped tubes for 16 hours. One animal chewed through the tube to get out, nine were found dead, and the remaining six were found in such poor condition that they had to be euthanized.

A recent PETA eyewitness investigation revealed that employees at Pitt failed to provide animals with adequate veterinary care, safe housing, relief from pain and distress, and painless euthanasia. Mice drowned in flooded cages and died of dehydration when watering systems failed or were positioned incorrectly, and rabbits were subjected to crippling surgeries and bred to have deformed skulls.

“Students live and work on university campuses for years without knowing that animals are being burned, poisoned, crippled, blinded, and subjected to other cruel treatment right under their noses,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “As the new school year begins, PETA is asking caring Pitt students to speak out against the abuse of sensitive, sentient beings in their midst.”

PETA points out that a 2018 Pew Research poll found that the majority of Americans oppose animal experimentation, with even greater opposition among younger demographics such as college students. No animal test is prohibited by law, no matter how painful or irrelevant, and mice, rats, birds, reptiles, and amphibians are excluded from protection under federal law.

Numerous published studies have shown that animal experimentation wastes resources and lives, as more than 90% of highly promising results from basic science research—much of it involving animal experimentation—fail to lead to treatments for humans. And 95% of new medications that are found to be effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please click here.