Victory! Spine-Crushing Experiments on Rabbits Exposed by PETA Have Stopped
Update (May 13, 2026): VICTORY! PETA has learned that the gruesome spine-crushing experiments on rabbits conducted at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and funded by the National Institutes of Health have been halted at least five months ahead of schedule.
This comes after we exposed these painful and pointless tests, paid for with nearly $3.8 million from NIH. The experiments left rabbits unable to eat, walk, or even groom, and in some cases, severed connections to their brains. According to information obtained by PETA, the tests “have been ceased,” and the experimenter “will soon retire.”
This is a major victory in PETA’s fight against the global network of NIH-funded animal suffering and death. But thousands of other animals are tormented in laboratories around the world with U.S. support. Please urge your senators and representative to cosponsor the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act, which would prohibit NIH from sending money overseas for experiments on animals.
Original post:
A laboratory at Sweden’s “prestigious” Karolinska Institute mangles rabbits’ spines and brains in hideous, prolonged, and ethically questionable ways, supposedly to study why humans walk upright, and how spinal injuries affect balance and posture in humans. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) bankrolls the gruesome tests.
You read that right: American taxpayers are supporting experiments on rabbits, who are quadrupeds, to study the posture of humans, who stand upright and walk on two feet.
It’s yet another example PETA has found of NIH’s continued and unchecked waste of billions of dollars used to underwrite a global animal torment and death network, and another reason Congress must pass the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act.
Since 2004, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of NIH, has given this laboratory nearly $3.8 million to conduct painful and invasive procedures on rabbits, including spinal cord injuries that leave them unable to eat, groom, and walk, brain and spinal injections, electrode implants, tracheotomies, and the disconnection of their brains. In that time, thousands of rabbits might have been tormented in these experiments. In the last five years alone, 127 rabbits were subjected to them.
What PETA Found
The horror at this Swedish lab doesn’t end with the procedures themselves. Records obtained by PETA show:
- Rabbits screaming in cages with no follow-up care
- Animals deemed to have met the experiment’s “termination criteria” (meaning the point at which an animal is suffering so much that euthanasia is necessary) were kept alive for up to 50 more days and subjected to additional experiments, regardless of their poor condition
- Rabbits paralyzed and unable to eat, groom, or stand for up to 63 days—yet still subjected to further experiments
- No veterinary checks
- Experimenters who don’t follow their own protocols
If this is what happens at one of the world’s most prominent institutions—one that awards Nobel prizes—imagine what’s happening elsewhere. PETA previously exposed a Colombian lab where monkeys were left to suffer in waste-filled cages—also funded by NIH. These foreign labs operate outside the reach of U.S. law, with little to no oversight, yet they receive your tax dollars.
Stop the Abuse, Pass the CARGO Act
If Congress passed the CARGO Act, currently under consideration in the House and the Senate, there would no longer be money to bankroll atrocities like this around the world. The CARGO Act would ban NIH from funding experiments on animals in overseas laboratories.
This is commonsense legislation. If you’re in the U.S., urge your Congressional lawmakers to support the CARGO Act now!
And anyone, anywhere, can urge NIH’s director to stop funding all experiments on animals in all foreign countries.
