‘Mutilated Rat’ to Lead Protest at University of Delaware Alumni Awards

PETA Supporters Will Call On President Assanis to End Torment of Baby Rats in Taxpayer-Funded 'Child Abuse' Studies

For Immediate Release:
April 12, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Newark, Del. – Led by a “giant, mutilated rat,” a group of PETA supporters will descend on the University of Delaware’s 50th Annual Distinguished Alumni Awards on Monday to call for an end to experimenter Tania Roth’s cruel “child abuse” studies on baby rats.

When:    Monday, April 15, 3 p.m.

Where:    University of Delaware Tower at STAR, 100 Discovery Blvd. (at the intersection with S. College Avenue), Newark

Since 2000, Roth has spent nearly $2 million in public funds tormenting these animals. 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, electrically shocked infant rats, and performed other procedures.

“A baby rat isn’t a human child, and modern researchers agree that depression and stress in rats can’t accurately mimic these conditions in human beings,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA is calling on the University of Delaware and its president, Dennis Assanis, to end these merciless studies that have failed to produce a single treatment for abused children.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a supremacist worldview. 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