PETA Global 2018 Issue 2

Four Sadists Down, One to Go PETA Stops Bizarre Sex Experiments

Scary doctor: © iStock.com/shotbydave

S exually stimulating hamsters after cutting holes in their skulls. Cutting the skin off the penises of live mice and injecting themwith chemicals. Burning mice’s brains and then measuring how interested they are in sniffing the urine of other mice. Removing rats’ ovaries and then injecting themwith antidepressants. PETA called on the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to stop funneling tens of millions of tax dollars into these stomach-churning experiments – and it listened. The four experimenters responsible for these sick studies no longer receive public grants. However, there is yet a fifth experimenter exposed by PETA whose outrageous work continues: Eric Nestler of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He seems to have an endless stream of ideas for tormenting animals. He and his team measured the time it took for rats to have sex then cut into the males’ skulls, implanted tubes in their brains, and pumped in a chemical that would block their ability to process sexual pleasure. Next, they measured whether the rats preferred amphetamines to sex. Finally, they killed them and dissected their brains. This project has received more than $4.5 million in US taxpayer dollars, and no one contacted by PETA can imagine any practical application for its results. It just smacks of sadistic, perverted sexual voyeurism. Mice are mammals, like humans – they feel pain, fear, loneliness, and joy like us. Though they’re highly social, communicate with each other using high-frequency sounds inaudible to the human ear, sing to their

babies, giggle when tickled, and can solve problems, Nestler has injected them with chemicals to induce seizures, shocked them, jammed them into tubes, and placed them on a 131˚F/55˚C hot plate. He has also suspended them by their tails for an hour and placed them in cages with more dominant members of their species in order to record their fighting. Nestler’s “finding” is that the more dominant mouse “is bigger and meaner and as soon as the test mouse is placed in that cage, the larger mouse attacks it.” This cruel test goes on for 10 days, leaving the battered mouse profoundly stressed and depressed. Another Nestler specialty is to destroy the maternal bonds that mice share by removing baby mice from their mother only days after birth so that he can see whether such separations cause stress as the mice grow into adulthood. There is no question in the minds of any in the scientific community, nor of any mother, that babies – of all species – thrive when they stay with their mothers. Yet

“Mice are mammals, like humans – they feel pain, fear, loneliness, and joy like us.”

Take Action Now Please help PETA end these sadistic experiments. Ask NIH to cut all

taxpayer funding for sex experiments on animals by e-mailing nihinfo@od.nih.gov . And write to Kenneth Davis, president and CEO of Mount Sinai Health System, at Kenneth.Davis@MSSM.edu to demand that he shut down Nestler’s laboratory.

he’s getting money to torture animals so that he can “answer” this ridiculous question.

22 SICK SCIENCE