Animals Mutilated, Burned at UTMB

Update: Based on PETA complaints documenting abuse and neglect of animals in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston's laboratories, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken the rare step of fining the facility $9,143 for egregious violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act—including failing to supply veterinary care to a sheep who had been used in experimental back surgery and could not stand up, failing to supply adequate veterinary care to a goat who died on an operating table, and failing to supply post-procedural pain relief to three sheep used in experimental surgeries.

Update: After reviewing our evidence, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected UTMB’s laboratories and confirmed our findings of multiple Animal Welfare Act violations.

A whistleblower at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has contacted PETA to report horrifying—and potentially illegal—abuses of dogs, sheep, monkeys, mice, and other animals who were tormented for experiments in the school's laboratories.

The insider reported that as a result of experiments in which dogs were cut open and had tubes surgically implanted in their colons, one dog died during surgery and another suffered in pain and died when staff members didn't provide post-operative painkillers. UTMB experimenters also induced spinal cord and nerve damage in sheep, and in one instance, a sheep apparently couldn't stand for three days following surgery and was given no pain relief. Mice apparently died from dehydration, and a monkey was locked in a room all by himself, even though monkeys require social contact with other members of their species to maintain sanity and physical health.

In other procedures conducted in this hellhole, experimenter Daniel Traber subjected sheep, pigs, and mice to third-degree burns on up to 40 percent of their bodies by searing off their skin with a Bunsen burner or a scorching-hot metal rod and forced the animals to inhale smoke.  

PETA has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling for an immediate investigation into these disturbing allegations. You can help by sending an e-mail to UTMB President David L. Callender urging him to investigate these allegations and, if abuses are confirmed, to discipline those responsible.

Written by Michelle Sherrow