PETA Exposé: Rabbits’ Spines Crushed in NIH-Funded “Human Posture” Study at Swedish Lab
For Immediate Release:
November 5, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
PETA has obtained records showing that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has bankrolled spine-crushing experiments on rabbits for two decades, supposedly to study human posture—including, bizarrely, what makes humans stand upright. The experiments are taking place at the prominent Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which has had five Nobel laureates among its faculty and whose members select winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.
The records show that experimenters violate NIH’s animal welfare guidelines by failing to follow their own protocols and allowing animals to suffer long past the point at which euthanasia is required. PETA has filed a complaint with NIH.
NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has funded Karolinska Institute experimenter Tatiana Deliagina from 2004 to the present, with a 2018-2020 hiatus. So far, she has received $3,752,020 in U.S. taxpayer money. PETA obtained records of 127 rabbits used by Deliagina between September 2021 and May 2025, and in the last 20 years, it’s likely that thousands of rabbits have been tormented and killed in her laboratory.
Current records show experimenters crushed the spines of 38 rabbits, subjected them to brain and spinal injections, and implanted electrodes in their muscles. Experimenters disconnected the brains from the spinal cords of some rabbits. Seven rabbits suffered so greatly that it violated Deliagina’s protocol to keep them alive, yet six of them were used in further painful tests and kept alive for up to 50 days before euthanasia.
Records show that veterinary care following agonizing procedures was deficient, inconsistent, and inadequately documented. One rabbit was found screaming in a cage, evidently denied care for nearly three weeks until he was euthanized. Another rabbit was found screaming and lying on his side, but no veterinary care was reported. The rabbit wasn’t euthanized for another month.
“It’s sickening that NIH has paid for this atrocity—and we come to expect it in foreign animal laboratories where there is no U.S. oversight,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA calls on NIH to immediately stop funding overseas experiments on animals and urges Congress to pass the CARGO Act without delay.”
The bipartisan Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act (H.R. 1085/S. 1802), introduced by Representatives Troy Nehls (R-Texas-22) and Dina Titus (D-Nev.-01) and Senators Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), would end NIH funding for any experiments on animals outside the U.S.
“NIH is moving away from cruel animal experimentation here at home, so turning off the taxpayer money spigot to laboratories abroad makes sense,” says Rep. Titus “It is crucial we pass the CARGO Act to end animal suffering worldwide and steward taxpayer dollars toward more reliable non-animal research methods.”
The deeply troubling records come after PETA exposed egregious animal welfare violations at another NIH-funded laboratory in Colombia, revealing an alarming pattern of taxpayer-funded cruelty at foreign laboratories operating outside of U.S. law.
Between 2011 and 2021, NIH gave away more than $2.2 billion in grants in 45 countries to fund disturbing experiments on animals, including genetically altering cats, infecting bats with deadly diseases, and subjecting monkeys to extreme and harmful conditions.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kitsfor people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
