University of Michigan 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 9, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

As the school year begins at the University of Michigan, PETA is alerting students to its new feature, “Failed Tests,” which ranks colleges as “bad,” “worse,” or “worst” for animals—and the University of Michigan, which used dogs, cats, more than 150 guinea pigs, more than 20 monkeys, and hundreds of rabbits, sheep, and pigs, along with other animals, in experiments last year, is among the “worst.”

The University of Michigan received more than $552 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2018. Records obtained by PETA reveal numerous incidents of neglect and incompetence in the university’s laboratories. Painful tumors in mice weren’t adequately monitored and were allowed to develop past protocol limits, several mice died of dehydration when a water system malfunctioned and no one noticed, and numerous mice and rats died after experimenters failed to follow procedures used to prevent contamination during experimental surgeries. Living mice and rats were found in coolers after workers failed to ensure that the animals were dead before discarding their bodies.

“Students live and work on university campuses for years without knowing that animals are being neglected, burned, poisoned, crippled, blinded, and tormented in a host of other ways right under their noses,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “As the school year begins, PETA is asking caring University of Michigan 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—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please click here.