A high school sophomore has developed a device that may help doctors better detect cancer in its early stages without invasive and painful biopsies—and he did it without harming a single animal. PETA awarded Daniel Suh, a student at Los Angeles' Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, a $1,000 prize and our Special Award for Humane Science for his nanowire device that detects circulating tumor cells.

PETA Director Justin Goodman presents Daniel with a framed plaque and $1,000 prize.

Daniel worked with researchers at the University of California–Los Angeles' California NanoSystems Institute on the screening device, which can detect breast and prostate cancer cells in the blood. Doctors can then harvest the cells for analysis and test potential cancer treatments.

Daniel, who presented his work at the Los Angeles County Science Fair, joins a forward-thinking group of students who have earned recognition from PETA for showing the scientific community that modern non-animal research methods are advancing medical science much more than hurting animals ever could.

PETA is dishing up a partial solution to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District's budget shortfall: Don't cut teachers' jobs—cut animal products instead. We've offered to pay to place ads featuring our chick mascot, Nugget, on school lunch trays to encourage kids to go vegan:

And if the school board takes us up on our offer, we'll even throw in a lunch of meat-free chicken nuggets, vegan chili, and corn on the cob for one of the district's schools.

Besides keeping the school district in the black, the ads could help students and teachers keep their consciences in the clear. Going vegan is the number one way that people can prevent cruelty to animals and environmental destruction. 

We can't think of a better way for Cleveland to feed students and feed the pig.

phayul / CC

You may have heard about the possible new "gay friendly" high school in Chicago. Harassment and violence are causing gay students to drop out at alarming rates—and the School for Social Justice Pride Campus would be a place for all students to be able to complete their education in a protected and welcoming environment.

I think this is wonderful news—but hey, we at PETA have always been against all forms of oppression. That's why our director of media relations, Michael McGraw, is writing Chad Weiden, the assistant principal of Social Justice High School (and likely principal of the new Pride Campus), with an important suggestion: Pride Campus should have an all-vegetarian cafeteria.

"It is only because of prejudice that animals killed for food on today's factory farms suffer miserable lives and nightmarish deaths," Michael writes—and it's true! Even though animals love, fear, mourn, and rejoice just like we do, their feelings are completely discounted. They are kept in cramped, filthy warehouses where they are beaten and abused, and at slaughter, their throats are cut or they are boiled alive—just because they don't happen to be exactly like us.

Michael's letter quotes Steven Simmons, a PETA staffer and gay rights activist who died of AIDS in the early '90s, who wrote, "It's time for us to end this hierarchy of who has the right to live, who deserves not to suffer, who should be respected, [the idea] that there's a limit to the amount of compassion that we can have for our fellow creatures." We're hoping that Assistant Principal Weiden will encourage his students to have compassion for today's most vulnerable population—the animals—by keeping Pride Campus meat-free.

You can read Michael's letter to Mr. Weiden here.

Written by Amanda Schinke