PETA Statement: Pheromone Experiments on Mice

For Immediate Release:
January 31, 2020

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA regarding the paper on pheromone experiments on mice printed in the journal Nature:

Curiosity-driven sex experiments are a perversion of real science, and research dollars should instead be devoted to human-relevant, non-animal studies that actually help people suffering from real diseases. Columbia University Irving Medical Center experimenters forced hundreds of mice to live with soiled bedding, photographed their vaginas, and then drilled into their brains and injected a virus. This pheromone experiment sought to find the neural circuitry for sexual attraction—in mice. Humans don’t even have a functioning vomeronasal organ or similar nerve connections. Tormenting mice and publishing a paper about it might be an easy career move, but the waste and cruelty can’t be excused.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.