PETA Exhibit Exposes Violent History of Animal Experiments, Including at CU Denver
For Immediate Release:
March 15, 2023
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
PETA is set to unveil its eye-opening exhibit “Without Consent,” which explores the troubled history of experiments on nonconsenting animals. The installation challenges institutions, including the University of Colorado–Denver (CU Denver), to rethink this exploitative, expensive, cruel, and archaic concept of science. Watch the trailer here.
Modeled after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “Without Consent” will be on display locally for four days as part of a national tour. It features 24 panels with descriptions and photographs of nearly 200 animal experiments conducted at U.S. institutions from the 1920s through today. An interactive virtual exhibit is also available here.
When: March 21–24, 12 noon–6 p.m.
Where: Grant Street (between E. 14th and Colfax avenues), Denver
“‘Without Consent’ tells the true stories of animals harmed and killed in experiments that they did not and could not consent to,” says Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Humans are only one animal species among many. Having the power to exploit others doesn’t give us the right to do so.”
The 110 million animals killed every year in U.S. laboratories are individuals who experience pain and fear, yet they’re burned, force-fed chemicals, sickened with disease, and robbed of their babies. Experimenters at CU Denver deprived rats of food and gave them heroin, then forced them into withdrawal before injecting them with cocaine and cutting out their brains. Other experimenters stopped and restarted the hearts of infant piglets, then killed them and cut their kidneys out. In another experiment, severe injuries were inflicted on the legs of 6-week-old rabbits, fat was removed from their groin and injected into the injury site, and then they were killed.
“Without Consent” also makes the point that vulnerable humans—including orphans in tuberculosis and psychological experiments, immigrant women in gynecological surgeries, soldiers in LSD and poison gas tests, and impoverished Black men in syphilis experiments—were exploited in experiments. Just as society now understands that these experiments were wrong, “Without Consent” shows that we need to let a similar moral awakening guide our conduct today by extending consideration to other nonconsenting sentient beings who suffer and die in experiments from floor-cleaner product tests to mother-infant separation studies.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
