‘Millions Spent Giving Sepsis to Mice Nearly Cost Me My Life’—But PETA’s Push Slashes Funds to Shocking, Useless Experiments

By Karin Bennett, PETA Foundation Staffer

I’ll never forget the day in 2014 when my world turned upside down. I’d felt strangely sick at work, and once home, I collapsed on the couch and faded in and out of consciousness. I thought I had the mother of all flus.

Fast-forward 48 hours: My husband and I were in a cab, racing to the hospital. He didn’t know what was wrong with me, but he knew I wasn’t right.

In the emergency room, I staggered to a bed. Three days later, I woke up in a daze with a man wearing a mask and a hazmat suit towering over me, and tubes sticking out of me here, there, and everywhere. I had contracted bacterial meningitis along with septicemia – an extreme response to infection. Over the next two weeks, I had CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasounds to make sure I wasn’t experiencing organ failure. My body would never be the same.

Still, I was very lucky: I survived. Many don’t: Sepsis afflicts nearly 50 million people globally every year, killing 11 million of them. Yet tens of millions of dollars and countless pounds are squandered in the US and UK on sepsis experiments on mice that are entirely irrelevant to human patients like me.

PETA launched a strategic campaign to change this. And now, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences – a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a primary sepsis research backer – has slashed funding for sepsis experiments on mice! Here’s how PETA made it happen.

150 Drugs for Sepsis in Mice, Zero for Humans

NIH has known for over a decade that sepsis experiments on animals are as useless as they are cruel. The animals endure fever, chills, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, lethargy, disorientation, shock, multiple organ failure, and agonizing deaths after being injected with toxins or feces, subjected to invasive surgeries, force-fed harmful bacteria, or made to inhale a bacterial “slurry.”

A 2013 milestone study revealed that sepsis doesn’t affect humans as it does mice. In fact, at least 150 drugs have treated sepsis in mice, but every single one has failed in human trials.

Sepsis Experiments in the UK

Similar experiments are happening at the University of Birmingham, University College London, the University of Nottingham, Queen Mary University, and other universities. PETA UK has provided these institutions detailed information about the futility of such experiments and the need to switch to superior, nonanimal methods.

What PETA Puts Into Stopping Scientific Fraud

No one else will show people what they are paying for, so PETA went inside University of Pittsburgh laboratories to show them. Experimenter Rajesh Aneja punctured mice’s intestines so that bacteria would leak into their stomachs and cause septic shock. As one veterinarian put it, mice were “falling over dead.”

Next, PETA’s giant “surgically mutilated mouse” rode the Metro train during rush hour to join dozens of PETA supporters at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC, in a lively protest.

PETA members also showed video footage of a freakish experiment at the University of Virginia in which two mice were sewn together so that they shared a bloodstream. The animals were given a severe infection, leading to mouse sepsis. Passersby were shocked.

PETA scientists submitted reams of evidence to NIH showing that experiments on mice are utterly useless to human health. The agency said it would take the evidence “under advisement” – but kept right on funding this heinous cruelty. So …

A Landmark Lawsuit and Monumental Progress

PETA filed a lawsuit against NIH and HHS, alleging that funding sepsis tests on animals violates the agencies’ legal obligation to reduce the number of animals used in experiments and fund research for the benefit of human health. It’s the first time anyone has sued the US government to end an entire area of research. NIH tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, but a federal court refused.

Then, at an annual gathering of sepsis researchers attended by PETA neuroscientist Dr. Emily Trunnell, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences declared that it was “unwilling” to fund the most common sepsis experiments on mice! It urged the audience of animal experimenters to pursue humane, human-relevant research methods such as those that use human cells, specimens, and data sets – methods that parallel those PETA has repeatedly recommended.

Following my ordeal, I bought myself a thrift-store trophy, an award for surviving sepsis. PETA’s progress is already a massive victory for human patients and mice and has sparked a major turning point in how the US government funds sepsis research.

What You Can Do

Urge your legislators to support PETA’s Research Modernization Now, an updated roadmap for replacing cruel, ineffective experiments on animals with superior, human-relevant methods. Please also urge NIH to cut funding for all sepsis experiments on animals.