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

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