Experimenter to ‘Stab’ Giant “Mouse’ in Pitt Protest
PETA Will Demand End to Sepsis Experiments Declared Ineffective by the Head of the National Institutes of Health
For Immediate Release:
October 25, 2017
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
What: In a gruesome parody to the University of Pittsburgh’s (Pitt) sepsis experiments on mice, a PETA member dressed as a Pitt experimenter will torment and stab a giant, “bloody” costumed “mouse” near campus on Wednesday. The protesters will reveal how Pitt experimenters puncture mice’s intestines so that fecal matter and accompanying bacteria leak into their abdomens, producing sepsis—a life-threatening reaction to severe infection.
When: Wednesday, October 25, 12 noon
Where: At the intersection of Schenley Drive and Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh
“Studying sepsis in mice to help humans is like using a roadmap of Philadelphia to find your way around Pittsburgh,” says PETA Chief of Laboratory Case Management Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA is calling for an immediate end to Pitt’s worthless and wasteful studies.”
PETA revealed that many mice used in Pitt’s sepsis experiments were, as one Pitt veterinarian described, “falling over dead” inside cages. A 2013 study documented the irrelevance of data from mice to human sepsis, burns, and trauma, compelling the director of the National Institutes of Health to lament the 150 drugs that successfully treat sepsis in mouse experiments but fail in humans—yet Pitt experimenter Rajesh Aneja has received $1.4 million in federal funding to conduct these experiments.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
