Giant ‘Rat’ to Protest Cruel Experiments at University of Delaware

PETA Will Ramp Up Pressure on School to End Tania Roth's Torment of Baby Rats in 'Child Abuse' Studies

For Immediate Release:
July 6, 2018

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner, 202-483-7382

Newark, Del. – Led by a giant “rat” and brandishing signs proclaiming, “UD: Stop Abusing Baby Rats,” “Help Kids, Don’t Hurt Animals,” and “Tania Roth Abuses Babies,” PETA supporters will gather outside notorious experimenter Tania Roth’s laboratory at the University of Delaware (UD) on Monday to urge the school to stop allowing her cruel “child abuse” studies on baby rats.

When:   Monday, July 9, 12 noon

Where:   63 E. Delaware Ave., Newark

PETA notes that since 2000, Roth has spent nearly $2 million in public funds tormenting rats in psychologically distressing and painful experiments that have failed to produce a single treatment for abused children. She has injected baby rats with opioids and force-fed them alcohol, stuffed pregnant mothers into tiny restraint tubes and blasted them with strobe lights, and electrically shocked infant rats. She has removed baby rats from their mothers and placed them with traumatized foster mothers who were ill-equipped to care for them and instead dragged, dropped, and neglected them. Roth’s findings haven’t been reproduced and have contradicted each other.

“A baby rat isn’t a human child, and modern researchers agree that depression and stress in nonhumans can’t accurately mimic these conditions in human beings,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Tania Roth’s experiments are nothing but torture sessions for sensitive animals, and PETA is calling on the University of Delaware to end them immediately.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

For Media: Contact PETA's
Media Response Team.

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 Ingrid E. Newkirk

“Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?” READ MORE

— Ingrid E. Newkirk, PETA President and co-author of Animalkind