The monkeys were left without water for several days in a row, the animals were not given proper pain relief before or after surgery, and the mouse actually caught fire – these are some of the grotesque breaches of animal welfare in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratories that PETA recently uncovered.
You read that correctly: Mouse. Burst. B. Flame.
PETA has found dozens of federal cases documenting mountains of unimaginable suffering and death at the hands of NIH experimenters whose casual attitude toward compassion is dwarfed only by their sheer negligence. The latest violations follow on the heels of the same dire violations that we identified earlier.
PETA is now calling for the resignation of the NIH’s top boss, Director Francis Collins, whose ineffective oversight is being disclosed in the archives.
Overall, federal reports recorded 34 cases of serious breaches of animal welfare at government-run NIH laboratories between March 2020 and June 2021. They include the following:
- Inattentive personnel did not notice the disconnection of the water supply, and the four monkeys were left without water for three days. The dehydration of the monkeys was so severe that fluids had to be injected intravenously.
- In 10 separate cases, experimenters failed to provide mice with access to food or water, which led to the death of animals from hunger or dehydration. In one incident, three baby mice died of hypothermia and dehydration when a leaking water bottle soaked the bedding in a cage without anyone noticing. In another incident, a mouse left without water was found to be “hunched over, lethargic and impaired.” The mouse was put to sleep.
- A six-year-old female monkey suffocated under anesthesia because the experimenters did not notice the disconnected oxygen cylinder.
- The male monkey required “extensive” surgery on his left arm, left leg, and back after the experimenters put him in a cage with an incompatible monkey and they fought.
- The monkey underwent two operations instead of one when an inattentive experimenter performed the same operation a week after the first.
- A three-day-old guinea pig died of a stroke after falling through the opening of the cage.
- The mouse caught fire when the staff did not notice that alcohol fumes were generated during electrocautery operation – a procedure that uses heat from an electric current – and ignited the animal’s body. The mouse was put to sleep.
- The NIH experimenters were unable to provide the animals with the necessary postoperative pain relievers. In one case, 142 mice were given expired pain relievers after surgery. In another study, 75 mice undergoing embryo transfer surgery received no postoperative pain relief. In another case, 15 monkeys were given expired pain relievers after using them in an unspecified procedure.
- An 18-year-old rhesus monkey, who was anesthetized to remove a tooth, suffered a massive burn – 2 inches by 3 inches and half an inch deep – of her abdomen when the experimenter placed a heating support gel pack directly on his abdomen. leather instead of first wrapping the packaging as required. Two days later, a lesion formed on the monkey’s abdomen.
And that’s on top of the NIH violations we reported last year.
Your tax dollars are paying for this awkward callousness. The NIH spends nearly half of its annual budget on cruel and useless animal experiments. In fact, the agency is throwing more than $ 19 billion down the drain every year because research has shown that 90% of basic research, most of which involves animal experiments, does not cure humans. NIH’s spending on shore leave is completely untenable, and the suffering and death – whether deliberate or due to his documented incompetence – that he buys is completely shameless.
Collins could show real leadership by ending NIH financial spending and ending unnecessary and painful animal testing, starting with Elizabeth Murray’s terrifying monkey experiments.