For immediate release:
July 6, 2021
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Indianapolis PETA calls on pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly to ban the cruel animal death test that many other pharmaceutical companies have left behind. In a letter sent today to Eli Lilly’s board of directors, PETA reveals the Prozac maker’s long history of invasive experiments on hundreds of dogs, pigs, monkeys and other animals and urges the company to open a new page by banning forced swimming. test. In this controversial test, which is heavily criticized by many scientists, experimenters fossilized small animals (often dosed with the test substance) by throwing them into inevitable containers of water and watching them seek rescue and try to stay afloat.
“The Eli Lilly story is steeped in the blood of thousands of animals,” says PETA neuroscientist Dr. Emily Trannell. “Useless test after useless test. Eli Lilly tortured and killed dogs, monkeys, pigs and others – or paid someone for it. He can take the first step in eradicating this culture of anguish by banning the forced swim test, as many other pharmaceutical companies have already done. ”
In just one experiment, Eli Lilly paid labs to surgically open the chests of dogs and pigs, insert tubes into their blood vessels, and pump them with experimental protein to see its effect on blood pressure and heart rate, according to a journal article published in 2020, in just one experiment. The animals were then sacrificed, the hearts were excised and examined.
Over the past decade, the company has hired laboratories to conduct most of its animal experiments – which means it doesn’t have to tell the government about the number of animals it harms and kills. In 2008, one of the last years when Eli Lilly reported to the government about the number of these species, more than 2,200 animals were used in various tests, including 784 dogs, 424 monkeys and 424 rabbits. These figures do not include mice, rats, and other small animals that are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act, the only federal law that offers any kind of animal protection in laboratories.
After negotiations with PETA, many pharmaceutical companies have dropped the forced swim test, including Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, AbbVie Inc., Roche, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk A / S, Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, and Bristol Myers Squibb.
PETA, whose motto is in part that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes arrogance, a worldview focused on human excellence. For more information please visit PETA.org or subscribe to the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…