PETA Global Issue 3

At Liberty, They Give Them Death A PETA Eyewitness Exclusive

P U T T I N G V I V I S E C T I O N U N D E R T H E M I C R O S C O P E

I can't give you my name, as I hope to be in another laboratory soon. To me, the scene looked more like a hoarding facility than a testing laboratory hired by some of the largest drug companies in the world. Inside the windowless walls of a cluster of nondescript buildings, Liberty Research, Inc., packed cats into cramped pens that allowed each of them just 1 square yard (0.9 square meters) of floor space.

The cats were nothing but numbers to the lab, but I gave many of them names. One day, I counted 27 crammed into a pen measuring only 8 feet by 12.5 feet (2.4 meters by 3.8 meters), roughly the size of a garden shed. Being forced together into such a tiny space made fighting and competition for food inevitable. Dak, a sweet tabby, was suffering from an ulcerated cornea that I was told had been caused by a cat who “poked a freaking claw right through” it. Jade, a cat with beautiful white paws, suffered from repeated seizures, his legs jerking uncontrollably. Temporarily paralyzed after each episode, he used his front legs to drag his twisted body laboriously behind him. After I went to management to seek help for him, a month went by, during which no action was taken – and then he was simply killed. He died after several botched attempts to sedate him, when a worker plunged a needle into his heart. His head jerked – was he still conscious? Liberty is well paid by pharmaceutical companies and universities to test drugs and conduct experiments on cats and dogs. In one hideous and indefensible procedure, workers drilled holes through beagles’ skulls and injected the distemper virus into their brains. The dogs woke up moaning and banging their heads on the sides of their cages, until blood spurted from their wounds. I looked right into the frightened eyes of one beagle as she lay fully conscious for more than seven minutes, gasping before she died. If I had walked out then and there or grabbed a survivor and run – which I wanted to do so badly that my heart ached – I would never have been able to expose what goes on inside Liberty’s inhumane facility, which is the only way to get this place shut down. But PETA needs your help.

“Dak, a sweet tabby, was suffering from an ulcerated cornea.”

Take Action Now Visit PETA.org/Liberty to tell Liberty’s customers – including Bayer, Merck, Novartis, and others – to

reconsider their ties to this cruel laboratory.

18 BIG PHARMA’S DIRTY SECRET