‘Mice’ to Demand End to Worthless Sepsis Study at Pitt

PETA Ramps Up Pressure on School to Stop Painful Experiments Whose Results Can’t Be Applied to Humans

For Immediate Release:
May 10, 2017

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

What:    Three PETA supporters wearing mouse masks will cage themselves outside the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) on Thursday to protest the school’s sepsis experiments on mice. During the experiments, mice’s intestines are punctured so that fecal matter and accompanying bacteria leak into their abdomens, producing sepsis—a life-threatening reaction to severe infection. A recent PETA exposé revealed that many mice were, as one Pitt veterinarian described, “falling over dead” inside their cages.

When:    Thursday, May 11, 12 noon

Where:    The intersection of Schenley Drive and Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh

A 2013 landmark study documented the irrelevance of data from mice to human sepsis, burns, and trauma—but Pitt experimenter Rajesh Aneja has received $1.4 million in National Institutes of Health funding to conduct these experiments.

“The worthless sepsis experiments on mice at Pitt are wasting public funds and animals’ lives,” says PETA Chief of Laboratory Case Management Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA is calling for an end to these studies that do nothing but sentence sensitive mice to agonizing deaths.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—is also running an ad in Pitt’s student newspaper calling out the school’s numerous oversight issues, including animals denied adequate veterinary care and monkeys driven insane by confinement.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.