Dogs Tormented, Killed in Ohio Labs; PETA Exhibit Shows Cruel History of Animal Experiments
For Immediate Release:
August 8, 2022
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
To alert locals to the fact that Ohio is the eighth-largest user of dogs for experiments in the U.S., PETA is bringing its free, eye-opening exhibit “Without Consent” to the city this week. The presentation of this provocative display follows the news that 4,000 beagles bred for experiments—including dogs who may have ended up in Ohio laboratories—are being removed from the now-shuttered national supplier Envigo, thanks to a PETA undercover investigation.
When: Wednesday, August 10, through Sunday, August 14, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Where: The intersection of Sixth and Vine streets
“Without Consent”—on display for just five days—explores the troubled history of experiments on nonconsenting animals through 24 panels bearing descriptions and photographs of nearly 200 tests conducted at U.S. institutions in recent decades, including in Ohio laboratories and at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded horrific experiments on dogs and other animals under director Anthony Fauci.
In 2019, Ohio laboratories kept and used 2,182 dogs for experiments. Even though high-tech research methods are available, including organs-on-chips and high-speed computers programmed with human data, dogs are force-fed drugs and used in a variety of sometimes extremely painful and even bizarre experiments. Most of them are killed. For example, experimenters at the University of Cincinnati recently purchased “mongrel dogs” from a vendor, killed them on arrival at the school, and cut out their hearts.
Other animals have suffered, too. At Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, experimenters kept pregnant rats in barren cages, took their pups away, and shocked the infants’ feet in freezing test chambers—in addition to pumping retinoic acid into the stomach of pregnant rats through a tube forced up their noses or down their throats. Experimenters at the University of Cincinnati even implanted devices into rats’ backs so they could pump themselves full of cocaine.
“‘Without Consent’ tells the true stories of dogs and other animals who were harmed and killed in experiments that they did not and could not consent to,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “Humans are only one animal species among many, and having the power to exploit the others does not give us the right to do so.”
PETA is calling on the National Institutes of Health—which gave Ohio laboratories over $916 million in taxpayer funds in 2021—to phase out animal experiments and adopt the group’s Research Modernization Deal.
An interactive virtual exhibit is available here. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
