The UW Ranked Among Worst Animal Testing Offenders

PETA’s Interactive ‘Failed Tests’ Resource Calls Out School for Using Tens of Thousands of Animals in Cruel Experiments

For Immediate Release:
September 30, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

As the autumn quarter begins at the University of Washington (UW), PETA is alerting students to its new feature, “Failed Tests,” which ranks colleges as “bad,” “worse,” or “worst” for animals—and the UW, which used more than 200 rabbits, 100 pigs, nearly 600 monkeys, and thousands of other animals in experiments last year, is among the “worst.”

The UW received $455 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2018 and is host to the notorious Washington National Primate Research Center. In one recent incident there, a monkey who hadn’t been fasted the night before an experimental surgery went into respiratory arrest, vomited while being given CPR, and died. In another, a monkey who was used in a painful procedure was given an opioid analgesic that had been diluted and therefore was likely inadequate. Apparently, the drug cabinet had been left unlocked. Other incidents in recent years include ones in which monkeys suffocated, died of dehydration, and died from bodily trauma.

“Students live and work on university campuses for years without knowing that animals are being burned, poisoned, crippled, blinded, and tormented in a host of other ways right under their noses,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “As the autumn quarter begins, PETA is asking caring UW students to speak out against the abuse of sensitive, sentient beings in their midst.”

PETA points out that a 2018 Pew Research poll found that the majority of Americans oppose animal experimentation, with even greater opposition among younger demographics such as college students. No animal test is prohibited by law, no matter how painful or irrelevant, and mice, rats, birds, reptiles, and amphibians are excluded from protection under federal law.

Numerous published studies have shown that animal experimentation wastes resources and lives, as more than 90% of highly promising results from basic science research—much of it involving animal experiments—fail to lead to treatments for humans. And 95% of new medications that are found to be effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please click here.