For Immediate Release:
March 30, 2022
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Madison, Wis. â PETA has called on University of WisconsinâMadison Chancellor Rebecca Blank to reimburse more than $1.1 million in taxpayer funds. The demand relates to an incident in which nearly two-thirds of a colony of 700 mice slated to be used by UW-Madison experimenter Laura Knoll were deemed ânon-criticalâ and killed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. PETA, which uncovered the killings in records obtained from the university, points out that this non-essential use of animals should never have been approved in the first place.
The deaths of these mice came after UW-Madison issued a directive near the start of the pandemic that deans and directors should âonly approve essential researchâ and experimenters âshould consider reduction or cessation of non-critical animal breeding.â PETA also filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health urging an investigation into the apparent waste of taxpayer funds for experiments on animals at UW-Madison and elsewhere deemed non-essential, a complaint with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseasesâwhich bankrolled Knollâs aborted experiments on miceâurging it to recover expended funds, and a complaint with the Wisconsin state auditor calling for an audit of UW-Madisonâs animal testing because of apparent fiscal waste.
âUW-Madisonâs killing of mice deemed ânon-criticalâ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic makes us question why such animals are bought, bred, and experimented on in the first place if theyâre considered extraneous,â says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. âPETA is calling on federal and state regulators to ensure that this university doesnât get away with daylight robbery at the expense of vulnerable animals and American taxpayers.â
Knollâs experiments involve infecting mice with toxoplasmosis, decimating their immune systems via full-body radiation, and injecting females with hormones so they can âsuper ovulate,â after which theyâre killed and their reproductive tracts are removed in attempts to understand the sexual cycle of the feline-specific parasite Toxoplasma gondii. As PETAâs Research Modernization Deal points out, more than 90% of basic scientific researchâmuch of it involving animal testingâfails to lead to treatments for humans and 95% of new medications that are found to be safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.
PETAâs letters are available upon request. The groupâwhose motto reads, in part, that âanimals are not ours to experiment onââopposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETAâs investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Source: Peta.org