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.
 

 
Just in time for World Week for Animals in Laboratories, PETA has unveiled a new nationwide ad campaign: "If you call it 'medical research,' you can get away with murder." What happens in laboratories—including burning, poisoning, crippling, and blinding animals—would be considered criminal cruelty if it occurred elsewhere. But no experiment—no matter how painful—is prohibited by law. Publicly funded universities work hard to keep their cruel animal experiments a secret: Experimenters know that if people found out that their money was being used to torment and kill animals in crude, painful, and deadly tests, they wouldn't stand for it.  
  

 
PETA's ads, which show graphic, heartbreaking photos from our undercover investigations inside university laboratories, are up on billboards, taxis, and bus shelters and in university newspapers in Boston and in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. The ads will be appearing in other U.S. cities in the coming weeks.

While PETA is grabbing the public's attention, you can help grab the attention of your representatives in Congress by asking that they divert public money away from experiments on animals in favor of humane, relevant, and lifesaving non-animal research.

 
Today marks the start of World Week for Animals in Laboratories. People frequently ask PETA what they can do to help stop the abuse of animals used in experiments. Of course, we always suggest taking action in our current campaigns against animal testing and only supporting companies that are cruelty-free. But there are many other easy ways to make a difference. Here are five more steps you can take:

1. Go vegan. Not only does eating meat cost billions of animals their lives, it also makes us sick. Experimenters then use these largely preventable diseases, such as obesity and heart disease, as an excuse to conduct cruel and deadly experiments on animals. Companies and the government also fund experiments to find ways to make factory-farmed animals grow larger faster. When you order your free vegetarian/vegan starter kit, you'll learn how to fight cruelty on farms and in laboratories every day.   
2. Quit smoking. It may shock you, but companies like R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Philip Morris continue to force rats to undergo nasty experiments in order to develop new cigarettes. Experimenters at universities also pump cigarette smoke into dogs' lungs and addict pregnant monkeys and their babies to nicotine in order to study smoking-related diseases.
3. Spay, neuter, and adopt. Heartless vivisectors exploit the animal overpopulation crisis by purchasing homeless animals from shelters to torment and kill in their laboratories. Spaying and neutering your animal companions and promoting animal adoptions help to cut off this supply of cheap laboratory "equipment." PETA's recent success in stopping pound seizure in Utah saved countless animals from a painful death in a laboratory.
4. Donate your body to science. You can help animals in laboratories even from beyond the grave. Donate your body to science through a program like the Anatomy Gifts Registry, and it will be used at medical training and research facilities around the world to advance science and replace the use of animals.
5. Only donate to cruelty-free charities. Sadly, some charities—including the March of Dimes and the American Cancer Society—fund  cruel and ineffective experiments that harm animals and divert resources that could be spent on modern and relevant non-animal research.  
     

Please also be sure to share this information with friends and family and encourage them to make the same compassionate decisions.  
 

Written by Jeremy Beckham

"World Week for Animals in Laboratories" means demonstrations against animal testing around the world. At UCLA on Wednesday, hundreds of activists from PETA, Last Chance for Animals, In Defense of Animals, Orange County People for Animals, and Stop Animal Exploitation Now banded together and descended upon the campus to speak out for animals in laboratories.

There was no way that drivers could have missed these passionate people or PETA's posters.

These people caused quite a stir with the pro-vivisection rally happening at UCLA on the same day.

In addition to mice and rats, cats, dogs, monkeys, and many other animals experience unimaginable pain in the name of "science."

To all the folks who showed up to express their disapproval of UCLA's abuse of animals in laboratories, thank you. You guys rock our world.

Written by Karin Bennett