Sheep and Calves Kept in Unrelieved Pain By UMass Medical School Experimenters; PETA Protest Planned

For Immediate Release:
May 13, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA on Thursday will confront University of Massachusetts (UMass) medical professor Heather Gray-Edwards after uncovering evidence that her experiments involve breeding animals to develop severe neurodegenerative diseases and letting them suffer without pain relief.

While Gray-Edwards speaks at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy Annual Meeting, activists will rally outside wearing paper masks depicting dogs, cats, pigs, sheep, and mice, and holding signs reading: “UMass Chan: End Experiments on Animals!” and “Cats and Sheep Bred With Crippling Diseases.”

• When: Thursday, May 14, 12:30-2 p.m.
• Where: Thomas Michael Menino Convention & Exhibition Center, 415 Summer St., Boston

The action follows PETA’s bombshell whistleblower exposé alleging a pattern of systemic animal welfare violations across UMass Chan Medical School laboratories.

Gray-Edwards’ experiments involve sheep, cats, mice, and calves bred to develop neurodegenerative diseases that cause seizures, brain swelling, difficulty walking, and more. The animals are then subjected to repeated invasive brain surgeries, spinal injections, and other invasive procedures before they die or are killed. In 2025, NIH awarded Gray-Edwards more than $1.8 million to conduct these experiments.

Some experiments involve denying these young animals pain relief, requiring experimenters to apply for special permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to conduct them. The USDA enforces the Animal Welfare Act, the only federal law that provides any protections for animals in laboratories.

“UMass Chan experimenters have proven they cannot care for the animals trapped in their laboratories. None of the data can be trusted. There’s nothing but garbage coming out of these laboratories,” says PETA Chief Scientist Dr. Katherine Roe. “PETA urges the National Institutes of Health to stop bankrolling these cruel experiments and UMass Chan to transition to state-of-the-art, animal-free research methods that actually benefit humans.”

In some of Gray-Edwards’ experiments, calves are bred to have Maple Syrup Urine Disease, causing them to suffer weakness, tremors, seizures, difficulty standing, confusion, and much more as toxic molecules build up in their brains. Experimenters then subject the babies to repeated sedation, injections, blood draws, and spinal taps.

Gray-Edwards also breeds mice and sheep to suffer from a genetic disease that causes them to suffer motor dysfunction, loss of coordination, seizures, hearing loss, visual impairment, and organ degeneration. Many of these animals go untreated as their disease escalates.

Whistleblowers have documented animals being starved and neglected, chronic veterinary understaffing, inadequate pain management, delayed or withheld treatment, and unsafe housing conditions, as well as repeated failures to stop experiments, treat or euthanize animals before they reached an extreme state of suffering or death in UMass Chan laboratories. 

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.