PETA's exciting new national anti-vivisection ad campaign tells it like it is: If you call it medical research, you can get away with murder. And April's nominees for Vivisector of the Month are a case in point. They are also so close in heinousness it's going to be a tough fight to call. Here are these baby-animal abusers in all their gory … I mean, glory:

Kevin Grove at the Oregon National Primate Research Center abuses monkeys to try to show that pregnant women should eat healthy foods and that not doing so can be bad for their babies.

Grove confines monkeys to cramped cages and stuffs them with unhealthy foods until they are obese. He then impregnates the monkeys and gives some of them healthy foods and others fatty foods. Some of the mother monkeys from each group are killed and cut open, and their brains and fetuses are removed and examined. The monkeys who aren't killed give birth and have their babies yanked away from them almost immediately, which is traumatic to both mother and baby. Grove and his team then terrorize the babies to see if the ones from mothers who ate unhealthy foods scare more easily.

Grove's junk science has recently been criticized by students, scientists, and compassionate people around the country. And did we mention that the cost of these stupid and inhumane experiments has totaled $3.4 million in taxpayer money since 2007? Is it just me or would that much money be better spent on educational programs teaching pregnant women about good nutrition?
 

 

And in the other corner, Jason Coleman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spends his days (and our tax money) tormenting and killing baby mice. In experiments funded by the National Institutes of Hell Health, he and his team cut the edges off the eyelids of baby mice and sew the lids together until they fuse to each other and the babies are unable to open one eye. Then they drill holes into the babies' skulls, implant electrodes into their brains, and stab the mice in the eyes with needles to inject drugs. After recording their brain activity, they kill the mice and cut out their eyes and brains.

Both of these vivisectors are a mother's worst nightmare, but which one would you most like to see get K.O.'d by one of our UFC PETA pals? Will it be Kevin "Gravedigger" Grove or Jason "Heart of Coal" Coleman? After you've made your pick, send an e-mail to your representatives and senators asking them cut funding for cruel and deadly animal experiments.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Woody Harrelson has a heart for animals that's as huge as his list of acting credits. Now, he's teaming up with PETA to help 14 chimpanzees who have been yanked from retirement and sent to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in Texas to be used in invasive and painful infectious disease experiments.

As you may recall, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) originally planned to transfer 202 "retired" chimpanzees to SFBR but shelved this idea following pressure from former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, members of Congress, PETA and other animal protection organizations, and tens of thousands of PETA supporters. However, 14 chimpanzees whom NIH had already transferred to SFBR are still imprisoned at the facility.

This morning, Woody sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and NIH Director Francis Collins urging them to "extend the same mercy" to these 14 chimpanzees. Writes Woody, "These aging chimpanzees have been imprisoned for their entire lives. They have endured decades of violence and torment, having been used in everything from space experiments to high-velocity seat belt tests. Only in the last few years have they enjoyed bedding, fruit, toys, the touch and companionship of other chimpanzees, and freedom from the knife. Will you please return the 14 chimpanzees at SFBR to these simple pleasures and allow them to continue the rehabilitation that they have more than earned?"

Will Woody's letter convince these decisionmakers to do the right thing? We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, let's add our voices to the chorus calling for these chimpanzees' retirement.

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post

Two hundred and some chimpanzees—previously used in experiments and kept in tiny cells, alone, isolated, and with nothing but a cement slab to sleep on and nothing to see or do, but who have been undergoing rehabilitation and socialization with each other—have been spared from their imminent transfer back into NIH laboratories. These chimpanzees, whom PETA president Ingrid E. Newkirk wrote about on The Huffington Post in 2010, had been about to be shipped out, but the National Institutes of Health has just announced—no doubt because of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's protests and those of many members of Congress and groups like PETA—that the chimpanzees will not be moved, at least until a study has been conducted, which will take two years.

Fourteen of the chimpanzees were not that lucky and have already been shipped out. Please join us in asking that they not be used and that all the chimpanzees be allowed to go to a sanctuary early in 2011. Meanwhile, pop a cork for our friends at Alamogordo, who have just scraped by under the wire! Thanks to all of you who wrote and called and helped to make this a happier New Year's Eve for these animals.

True Blood's Kristin Bauer and veteran actor Gene Hackman have joined PETA, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Animal Protection of New Mexico, and other animal rights groups in speaking out against the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) plan to transfer more than 200 "retired" chimpanzees from New Mexico to Texas—where they will likely be used in invasive experiments. Some of the animals are 60 years old and are refugees from the space program. Others were used in seatbelt crash tests decades ago.

"We now know that [chimpanzees] use tools, grieve for their dead, and are capable of complex communication with humans," says Kristin. "These wonderful animals deserve so much better."

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is also fighting for these apes: After writing to NIH's director, he met with NIH officials today to urge them to scrap this callous plan.

These chimpanzees need your help! Please take a moment today to ask officials to permanently retire the chimpanzees to a reputable sanctuary.

Written by Paula Moore

PETA Demonstration Against Cruel Toxicity Testing in the ‘90s

You may have heard the news that the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program, and the National Institutes of Health have signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" to coordinate efforts on alternative methods to animal experimentation. This stuff is always more complicated than it sounds, so it’s not quite time to pop the champagne corks just yet (as some groups have been doing)—but feel free to put the bubbly on ice, because it’s a good sign that our hard work is paying off.

Courtesy of the good folks in PETA’s Regulatory Testing Division—who have been working behind the scenes with these agencies for years to get them to admit that their bloated animal testing programs (which are responsible for the suffering and death of hundreds of millions of animals) are outdated, ineffective, and, frankly, absurd—here’s a little rundown on what this all means, and how it came about:

First of all, this is a significant about-face for the NTP and the EPA—both of whom have been shockingly resistant to incorporating modern science into their toxicity testing programs. It looks like the United States is finally beginning to realize (as Europe has known for some time and as the animal protection community has been advocating for years) that the public and the environment can be better protected through non-animal in vitro tests based on well-understood biological principles than by throwing wads of cash and millions upon millions of lives into the bottomless pit of animal testing.

Fighting this entrenched, bureaucratic mentality over the past couple of decades hasn’t been easy—and, as usual, we’ve had to use a two-pronged attack to get it done: While our Regulatory Testing Division comments on each animal testing plan that the EPA and the NTP puts forward, works directly with top corporations doing the testing and finding alternatives, testifies at government workshops and before Congress, and, occasionally, sues the government to disclose their deliberations about promoting animal tests, our Campaigns Department gets out the billboards, the bullhorns, and the bunny suits and shouts about these ludicrous, wasteful experiments to anyone who will listen. During this time, PETA has convinced the Department of Transportation to stop testing corrosive substances on rabbits, followed Al Gore around on his campaign stops with a 10-foot rabbit to convince him to stop pushing EPA animal tests, and worked (ever-so-patiently) to persuade regulatory agencies which still believe that it’s important, for example, to keep testing asbestos on animals (the NTP) and which have failed to ban a single toxic industrial chemical in more than a decade (the EPA) that maybe it’s time to stop testing on animals and start using modern science instead. We’ve also funded the development and incorporation of non-animal test methods to the tune of more than ¾ million dollars in recent years.

This new collaboration is certainly something different, and it’s a promising step in the right direction—but it has to be backed up with Congressional will and funding if it’s going to get anywhere. A new entity must be created with the resources to get the job done—it can not be left to the EPA and the NTP. The fact that the head of the human genome project is involved with this is a good sign—it’s going to take an intense, focused effort on the scale of the human genome project to get the job done.

So we’re hoping that the prevailing wind surrounding the National Research Council’s vision and the newly announced collaboration between the NTP and the EPA will provide the momentum necessary to overcome the inertia that has characterized the American government’s attitude to toxicity testing for decades, and which causes the suffering and death of more than 15 million animals every year.

For more information on what you can do to help animals used for experimentation, check out StopAnimalTests.com.

Update: We’ve just received word that the ominous-sounding “NIH Office of Research Integrity” is investigating this situation right now. I’ll let you know as soon as we hear the results of that inquiry. And the story was run in USA Today yesterday. You can read that article here.

OK, so there’s a horrifying part to this story, and there’s a part that’s just so mind-bogglingly stupid that it’ll make you cry. We’ll start with the horrifying part: A branch of the NIH is using chimpanzees as incubators to produce antibodies for anthrax, smallpox, and other pathogens in the event of a bioterror attack. For the animals used in these experiments, this means (among other things) excruciatingly painful bone marrow extractions and, apparently, complete isolation for as long as 20 years.

Now, here’s the dumb part: We already have treatments for those pathogens. Like, there are already antibody-based drugs for those pathogens pending approval by the FDA. Two companies have been contracted to provide antibody-based anthrax and smallpox drugs to the Strategic National Stockpile, and at least three other companies have antibody-based anthrax drugs in clinical trials. None of these drugs uses antibodies derived from chimpanzees (which means, incidentally, that the NIH could be violating the Animal Welfare Act, since non-animal therapies already exist).

What this all adds up to is that the NIH’s experiments are a) cruel, b) redundant, c) an unbelievable waste of resources that ought to be devoted to preparing for bioterror attacks. Which is not something you should be screwing around with, IMHO.

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk wrote to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this morning to point that out. You can read her letter here.