Pfizer Bans Near-Drowning Test on Animals

After less than a year of intense pressure from PETA and more than half a million activists, Pfizer—the world’s third-largest pharmaceutical company—has banned the forced swim test. In this experiment, small animals are dropped into inescapable beakers of water and made to swim for their lives, supposedly to gauge the effectiveness of drugs to treat depression in humans. At least 1,270 mice and rats suffered needlessly when Pfizer conducted this scientifically debunked experiment. And in the nearly 20 years that the company used the test, it didn’t led to any marketable drugs to treat human depression.