A big "Thank you!" is due to the Gratiot County Board of Commissioners for taking an important step toward ending the betrayal of homeless animals in Michigan.

You may recall that this past winter, the University of Michigan ended a cruel cat laboratory after PETA revealed that the school was purchasing homeless cats from R&R Research, a notorious Class B dealer. PETA also discovered that R&R obtained many of the cats from the Gratiot County, Michigan, animal shelter. Local citizens joined PETA in calling for reform, and the commissioners have now passed a resolution to strictly limit the number of animals that it releases to R&R Research.

He is of one of the cats who ended up at the University of Michigan and was killed

The End of an (Appalling) Era

Gratiot County couldn't completely ban the release of animals to R&R because of a contract that runs through February 2014, but the commissioners voted to release only one animal to R&R in each of the next two years. While it's disappointing that two animals will still fall into R&R's hands, the commissioners are making the best of a bad situation—especially when you consider that, last year, the county animal shelter handed more than 30 animals over to that torture pimp. In addition, the county voted to end the barbaric use of gassing as a method for euthanasia at the shelter.

Mecosta County—the only other county in the state whose shelter was releasing animals for use in experiments—confirmed that starting July 1, its shelter will no longer do so. So when Gratiot County's contract with R&R expires, it will mark the complete end of pound seizure in the state of Michigan.

How You Can Help Animals Exploited by Animal Dealers

Please ask your congressional representatives to prohibit Class B dealers from selling lost, abandoned, and stolen animals to laboratories.

Less than two weeks after receiving appeals from PETA and PETA Germany, RWTH Aachen University, a top German college, has announced that it will no longer perform invasive and deadly training exercises on live pigs in its advanced surgical course, effective immediately!

Truly 'Advanced' Training

Earlier this month, PETA and PETA Germany sent university officials and the German state veterinary authority a detailed dossier outlining humane and superior surgical training methods that—unlike the cruel procedures then used by RWTH Aachen—wouldn't risk violating German laws requiring the use of non-animal teaching methods when available.

The outreach to RWTH Aachen followed PETA Germany's discovery that as part of the "Advanced Skill Course" at the school's surgical clinic, students were cutting open pigs' chests, inserting tubes, and surgically removing their organs before finally killing the animals.

Move the Momentum to Michigan

While RWTH Aachen and the University of Ulm in Germany have both recently scrapped the crude and archaic use of pigs in labs in favor of training surgeons on modern and sophisticated 21st century technology, some U.S. facilities—including the University of Michigan—continue to cut holes into pigs' limbs, throats, and chests and stab needles into their bones and hearts for trauma training exercises even though superior simulation methods exist.

How You Can Help These Pigs

Please tell officials at the University of Michigan to cut out cruel trauma training on pigs and start using humane, contemporary methods of instruction instead.

If you could wave a magic wand to help stop cruelty to animals, you would do it, right? Well, PETA doesn't have any magic wands, but we do have a way to help animals that's just as easy.

Every day this month, our December Action Drive page will feature three new campaigns that need your help. All you have to do is click once to read the letter that PETA has written to an animal abuser on your behalf, type in your name, and click again to send it. It takes even less time than saying "Abracadabra."

With your help, we've achieved many great victories for animals in 2011, such as sparing homeless cats from being used as nurses' training "tools" at the University of Michigan and convincing Lipton, the world's largest tea brand, to end animal tests. Let's finish 2011 on a high note with 250,000 actions taken for animals. The Take Action December Drive site has a counter so that we can track how close we're getting to that goal.

Ready to get started? Make your first click here.

 
Although experimenters would have you believe that they only torment animals when alternatives are not available, PETA always exposes this for the blatant lie that it is. The truth is, facilities such as the University of Michigan, the Medical University of South Carolina, and St. Louis Children's Hospital are still subjecting cats and pigs to invasive, painful, and often deadly procedures in some training courses even though the facilities already teach the same exact skills in other courses using sophisticated and superior human-patient simulators! It's up to us to ensure that these cruel animal laboratories are replaced with modern methods that spare animals and better prepare trainees to treat human patients. As World Week for Animals in Laboratories comes to a close, you can help by urging the University of Michigan to cut animals out of its training courses and switch to cutting-edge technology instead.
 

PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich frequently visits colleges across the country and participates in debates about the ethics of eating meat. His debates are usually very popular and well-attended. But recently, Columbia University canceled Bruce's scheduled debate just hours before it was supposed to take place. Why? Because seven years earlier, Bruce interrupted a speech at the school's commencement ceremony to speak out about cruel experiments on animals being conducted in Columbia's laboratories. Guess they didn't want that info to get out. Bear in mind that this is the same school that welcomed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with open arms. Wow.
 

 
Today, Bruce participated in a similar debate at the University of Michigan (U-M)—despite the fact that just last week, a PETA member attended the school's conference on survival flight training, calmly took the microphone during a speech, told the audience about the school's use of animals in cruel and archaic training methods, and requested that the school use modern simulators instead.

 
Hmmm … looks like U-M is a little more open-minded than Columbia. Here's hoping that U-M extends that open-mindedness to exploring more humane training methods.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Lily Tomlin is always looking for signs of intelligent life, but she hasn't yet found it in the University of Michigan's (UM) survival flight course. The Detroit native recently wrote to UM to ask its officials to stop allowing cats and pigs to be abused in cruel and deadly flight training exercises and to replace the animals with advanced human patient simulators instead. Human patient simulators are used across the country to train flight nurses, and UM already uses simulators to teach the same skills in other courses.

In a letter to UM President Mary Sue Coleman, Tomlin writes, "Having trainees jam hard tubes down cats' throats, cut holes into pigs' throats and chests, and stab needles into the animals' bones and the tissue surrounding their hearts is simply unjustifiable when modern and superior alternatives are available."

Are you listening, UM? Don't make Lily go all Ernestine on you.

Coleman also received a surprise visit recently from PETA members wearing cat and pig costumes to protest an awards ceremony at which she was being recognized. The animals don't get a break, so why should UM?

Join PETA, Lily Tomlin, Iggy Pop, UM's student government, and others in urging UM to stop killing cats and pigs in crude and cruel training laboratories.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

It's time once again for the not-so-coveted Vivisector of the Month award. Of course, all vivisectors deserve the "prize" for their mad science, but we've narrowed the field to two particularly nasty candidates. We're asking you to vote for the person you would most like to see in a stockade getting beaned in the head with fruit.

Mark Lowell is a faculty member at the University of Michigan (UM) who seems to have forgotten that when he went through medical school he swore an oath to do no harm. Lowell directs a Survival Flight course for nurses; in the course, cats and pigs are tormented even though superior human simulators are used to teach the same skills in other courses at UM. Cats have hard tubes repeatedly forced down their windpipes for intubation training, and many of them are killed. Pigs have holes cut into their limbs, throats, and chests and are stabbed with needles in their bones and the tissue surrounding their hearts. PETA, students at UM, the campus newspaper, the student government, and even UM alum Iggy Pop are vigorously urging Lowell to shut down this nasty operation.

In the other corner, weighing in at "cold and callous," is Bradley Greger. This peach of a person is one of the experimenters we've been telling you about at the University of Utah (the U) who buys cats from the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter and subjects them to cruel experiments before killing them. Greger also drills holes into monkeys' and cats' skulls and implants electrodes into their brains. He screws titanium pins into the monkeys' skulls and attaches an aluminum head-restraint device to immobilize the animals in chairs for up to eight hours per day for brain experiments.

You can use our form to e-mail the University of Michigan and the University of Utah and tell them that you support modern, humane science—not cruel animal experiments.

So who will it be: Mark "Lower Than Low" Lowell or Bradley "The Butcher" Greger? Get your moldy oranges ready, aim, and fire.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

You guys are so awesome, and here's why: After PETA asked everyone to urge officials at the University of Michigan (UM) to stop tormenting live cats and pigs in cruel and deadly survival flight training exercises (which are completely unnecessary considering that UM already uses superior human-patient simulators to teach the same skills in other classes), you came through.

And how! So many people have been contacting the university that callers to the office of UM President Mary Sue Coleman are greeted with this message:

On behalf of the animals who are still suffering in laboratories, thank you. Keep up the great work—and keep those calls coming!

Written by Jeff Mackey

Not only do PETA folk get to help animals (of course), and get e-mails with subject lines like "Has anyone seen our giant bunny costume?"—they also get to share in the involvement of the super-cool rock legends (from Macca to Grace Slick to Chrissie Hynde) who throw their considerable weight behind our efforts to help animals.

Now the one-and-only Iggy Pop has joined PETA and students at Iggy's alma mater, the University of Michigan (U-M), in demanding that animals who are tormented and killed in a medical training course be replaced with the humane and educationally superior alternatives that are available. After learning that U-M abuses and kills cats and pigs in its Survival Flight course for nurses, Iggy fired off a letter on PETA's behalf, urging the university to drop these cruel and archaic animal labs and to switch to the sophisticated simulators that are already used to teach the same skills in other advanced U-M training courses.

Iggy writes, "It's common sense that cutting apart pigs and maiming cats isn't the best way to train people to treat humans. … U-M should not be harming animals when better alternatives are available and already in use on campus."

Written by Jeff Mackey

personalbrandingblog / CC

Hold onto your hats, folks. The University of Michigan has been forced to pay back $1.4 million (yes, that's with seven digits) after it "accidentally" used federal grant money for experiments on animals that it continued long after its approval had lapsed.

The massive refund came to light after PETA filed a Freedom of Information Act request and uncovered documents indicating that U-M had violated federal regulations and guidelines on numerous occasions, including allowing animals to die from starvation and dehydration, performing unauthorized surgeries, and "inadvertently" throwing dozens of animals into a trash compactor.

One U-M experimenter injected a rabbit with an unauthorized anesthetic, which meant that the rabbit had to be euthanized after suffering necrosis of ear tissue and trauma to the eye. In another incident, half a dozen animals died when the chamber in which their cages had been placed caught fire. Some of the animals died of smoke inhalation, while others drowned as their cages filled with water from the sprinkler system.

Most importantly costly, as it turned out, U-M was charging the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the care of animals who were no longer enrolled in approved experiments. In a March 2007 internal investigation ordered by NIH, U-M determined that over a period of six months, there were 33 incidents in which experimenters continued to test on animals even though the experiments did not have the required approval from the oversight committee.

Unfortunately, this is what happens when the folks who are supposed to implement universities' so-called "animal care and use programs" just … well … don't, and when big, bloated bureaucracies like NIH—which gave U-M $423.2 million in 2008 alone—throw money at guys in white lab coats without bothering to check and see what they're actually doing with it.

We're now calling on NIH revoke the University of Michigan's "assurance," which allows U-M to receive federal funding to perform experiments on animals. Hey, it never hurts to ask, right?

Written by Alisa Mullins