PETA Global 2020 Issue 1

Notorious Experimenters Hold Animals at Knifepoint Stop Those Men! Shreesh Mysore and Joshua Gordon make money at the expense of the helpless animals they force to undergo painful, terrifying experiments.

P E T A ’ s 2 0 2 0 V i s i o n • P E T A ’ s 2 0 2 0 V i s i o n •

Polaroid: © iStock.com/blackred

Sheltering The Future Is Socially Conscious

Robbing the Gravy Train At Johns Hopkins University, Shreesh Mysore spends his days torturing barn owls by cutting into their skulls and bombarding them with lights and noise, supposedly to learn more about attention deficit disorder in humans. During these experiments, he pokes electrodes into the brains of fully conscious birds for hours, mutilating them so severely that they become “unusable” – at which point he kills them. Mysore admits that his experiments are painful for the owls, yet in his grant application for the experiments, he provides scant information on any pain medication administered. Unlike humans, owls have well-developed auditory and visual systems specializing in target selection. Bombarding them with artificial stimulation while measuring their brain activity in a distressing and completely unnatural situation does nothing to further our understanding of human disorders. Mysore intends to torment up to 60 owls in his latest round of horrors, including using six for practice surgeries by inexperienced staff. He forces some owls to breed and produce more victims for his laboratory. Between Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he’s received more than $2.3 million in funding. Wanted: A Conscience Joshua Gordon’s hands were dirty before he became director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): A psychiatrist and animal experimenter, he’s subjected mice, rats, and other small animals to the same sick experiments that he now oversees.

and then drop them into beakers of water to see how long they’ll swim for their lives. In the “tail suspension test,” experimenters tape mice upside down by their sensitive tails, and in the “foot shock experiment,” they lock rodents in an electrified chamber and jolt them repeatedly. Perhaps most twisted of all, experimenters apply a male mouse’s urine to the vaginas of female mice before placing them in cages with unfamiliar males, which causes the males to attack. In addition to being criminally cruel, these pointless tests waste money and hinder legitimate efforts to treat humans struggling with mental illness. Bad Company Mysore and Gordon aren’t the first mad scientists to come under PETA’s microscope. John Hagmann masterminded the cruel US military trauma training program in which pigs and goats are shot, stabbed, dismembered, and killed. Following PETA’s campaign, the Department of Defense cut him off, forcing him out of business. Eric Nestler and his Icahn School of Medicine accomplices in New York have tried to determine whether male rats prefer amphetamines or sex by cutting open their skulls, pumping in chemicals, and then dissecting their brains. Thanks to PETA, four other experimenters responsible for similar tests no longer receive NIH funding.

By Ingrid Newkirk

Owl: © Johns Hopkins University, “Owls Help Unlock the Secrets of Attention” • Owl ad: © iStock.com/sbisme • Masking tape: © iStock.com/spxChrome • Film strip: © iStock.com/natasaadzic

R ecently, a staff member arrived at PETA’s headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, and saw a cat carrier outside. People sometimes donate such items to us, and we’re grateful. But when he went to pick it up, two pairs of green eyes looked back at him. Thank goodness nothing had happened to the cats during the night. Chances are, having tried other facilities with “no room at the inn,” their owners feared it would be the same with us. But as an open-admission shelter, PETA never turns any animals away, ever. ‘No-Kill’ or No Help? The same can’t be said for an ever-increasing number of shelters, which are implementing “no-kill” policies, including turning animals away because they’re almost always full, putting animals on months-long waiting lists, charging “surrender fees,” and limiting their hours of operation – motivated by nothing more than a desire to boost their artificial “saved” statistics. It’s a dangerous trend that’s fueling an epidemic of abandoned animals with nowhere to go.

come to an awful end: being tossed out onto the highway, dumped in the woods, or thrown into a river to drown. Within just 24 hours, 20 cats were left outside an Ohio shelter that only accepts “adoptable” animals – that is, if space is available. A Chihuahua was seriously injured when she was thrown over the fence at a “no-kill” shelter that charges a fee and requires appointments. After being turned away at a Florida shelter, a kitten’s owner abandoned him in the parking lot, where he got hit by a car and died from his injuries. If unwanted animals wind up in the hands of phony “rescuers” (hoarders) – like the one in California whose house burned down with 100 cats trapped inside in carriers – then sadly, it’s out of the frying pan into the fire. Sheltering With Mercy Animal shelters’ most important responsibility is to prevent the suffering of as many animals as possible. That means adopting socially conscious sheltering policies, i.e., taking in all animals (without waiting lists or fees), making sound euthanasia decisions, providing low cost spay/neuter services to attack the homeless-animal crisis at its roots, helping with pre-surrender and post

adoption advice and support, and thoroughly screening potential adopters.

No one wants to euthanize, but socially conscious shelters accept the responsibility to do what’s needed: to offer a painless release for the seriously sick, injured, and aggressive as well as those with no good chance of adoption. It’s an act of mercy – unlike mercilessly slamming the door in the faces of people with unwanted animals who may end up abandoning or harming them because they have nowhere else to turn. PETA found the two cats left on our doorstep a loving home together. Others facing injuries, hunger, thirst, parasites, and a slow death can thank the “no-kill” movement for valuing numbers on a page more than the flesh-and blood animals they turn away.

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TORTURED BARN OWLS

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CRUEL FORCED SWIM TESTS

Take Action Now Please support socially conscious shelters – starting with never calling them “kill

Take Action Now Please go to PETA.org/JHUOwls to tell Johns Hopkins to end Mysore’s

“These practices sound more like something from the Inquisition than from the research laboratory of an esteemed university.” – Stephen Jones, raptor expert

experiments and PETA.org/NIMH to urge NIMH to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on cruel and irrelevant experiments. Urge your friends and family to get involved as well.

shelters,” which they don’t deserve. Donate supplies, volunteer to walk dogs, or hold a yard or bake sale to raise funds. And please also support PETA’s shelter and low-cost spay/neuter clinics at PETA.org/CAP .

In the “forced swim test,” his minions dose animals with a test substance, such as an antidepressant,

PETA receives endless reports of unwanted animals who

Global

PETA’S 2020 VISION: WINNING FOR ANIMALS

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