UTMB sadistically torturing animals. Please protest.

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• Investigate the Unnecessary Suffering of Animals in UTMB’s Laboratories

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• Cats Tormented and Pigs Stabbed in the Heart at University of Michigan

Update January 6 | USDA to inspect UTMB after PETA complaint

From PETA

An insider at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has contacted PETA to report that I was appalled to learn about the alleged suffering of dogs, mice, pigs, sheep, ferrets, and other animals at the hands of University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston staff members who appear to have been improperly trained, neglectful, and uncaring.

The whistleblower says that experimenter Daniel Traber has subjected sheep, pigs, and mice to third-degree burns on up to 40 percent of their bodies and forced the animals to inhale smoke from burning cotton. UTMB experimenters also intentionally caused spinal cord and sciatic nerve injuries in sheep. One sheep who was subjected to back surgery reportedly could not stand for three days following the surgery and was given no pain relief.

Our source also reports the following:

• UTMB faculty members cut open dogs and surgically implanted tubes into their colons for irritable bowel experiments. One dog reportedly died during surgery, and another died in pain following surgery when staff members did not provide anesthetics and were apparently unable to use the monitoring equipment correctly.
• A macaque monkey—a highly-social being for whom social contact is necessary to maintain physical and mental health—was confined by herself to a stainless steel cage in a room where she had no contact with and no opportunity to see or hear other nonhuman primates.
• Several sheep and one pig suffered serious injuries, including a broken leg and trauma so severe that it caused one sheep’s intestines to penetrate her chest cavity.
• Mice died, most likely as a result of dehydration, after staff members failed to notice that the animals did not have access to water.

PETA has repeatedly reached out to UTMB through letters and phone calls in an attempt to discuss these alleged violations with the university directly, but our correspondence and calls have been totally ignored. Now, PETA has filed an urgent complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling for an immediate investigation.

You can also be a voice for the animals at UTMB. Please take a minute of your time today to urge UTMB President David L. Callender to immediately conduct a thorough investigation of the university’s laboratories and dismiss any employees whose incompetence, negligence, or outright cruelty are found to have contributed to increased pain and misery for animals.

Putting your subject line and letter into your own words will help draw attention to your e-mail, please click HERE to send.

Message Text

I was appalled to learn about the alleged suffering of dogs, mice, pigs, sheep, ferrets, and other animals at the hands of University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston staff members who appear to have been improperly trained, neglectful, and uncaring.

I urge you to immediately investigate the reported problems inside your university’s laboratories and take all necessary measures to end any mistreatment of animals that is uncovered. I respectfully ask that you, as president of the university, take personal responsibility for ensuring that these alleged unchecked abuses and unethical behavior are thoroughly investigated and dealt with, as any such abuses would surely be a stain on your institution’s reputation.

Click to read PETA’s Vivisector of the Month

RELATED | Big Pharma, Big Fraud

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If you prefer, feel free to use a Sample Letter such as the following, but please modify and shorten for greater impact:

To Whom It Concerns,

I am ashamed to be part of a species that objectifies animals, seen as commercial products to eat, wear, and exploit for entertainment and testing. However, of all the inherently cruel conditions humans inflict on animals, nothing is more destructive and immoral than vivisection, unparalleled in both its cruel intent and apathetic nature. To subject animals to unnatural medical conditions and practices for the purpose of theorizing potential human treatments is not only scientifically illegitimate but it is also fundamentally inhumane. As a means of fostering social validation, vivisectors consistently promote the idea that animals are responsible for producing lifesaving equipment and treatments and that those who are against vivisection are opposed to medical advancements. That illogic would be laughable if millions of animals were not tortured to support such. Indeed, to grant animals the power to cure and prevent disease while experimenting on those same animals is a contradiction in both practice and thought. With respect to such idiotic assertions, when do you establish the innately flawed practice of animal experimentation as the fault when people die as the result of unpredicted drug reactions?

From a pragmatic standpoint, if we could adequately determine the effects of drugs using animals in general, then, as I see it, human trials would be completely unnecessary. Therefore, if we acknowledge that data from animal testing cannot be extrapolated to humans, as demonstrated by the need for human testing trials prior to a general administration of drugs, then why are animals used at all? To determine a general idea relative to safety of them? If animals cannot be used to predict a human outcome in general, then how can they be used to predict safety? It’s a ridiculous premise, one on which you place the lives of humans and the death of animals with a publicity machine using deceptive statements and misleading assertions fabricated by unscrupulous “scientists” to garner social approval. Indeed, to establish your legitimacy, you constantly promote the idea that those opposed to animal testing are supportive of human suffering. What an insidious remark, effective in its subtlety to gain public endorsement while at the same time fostering a hatred towards anti-vivisectionists, labeling us as misanthropists. I can assure you, I am neither ethically challenged nor stupid: your false assertions are nothing but pathetic attempts to rationalize a morally deficient industry where you capitalize on the fear of people and exploitation of animals.

Allow me but another moment to correct your disclaimers that animals are treated well, absent suffering and pain. The arrogance of such proclamations is astounding. Humans are unable to adequately describe pain in other species other than to accept its existence; to attempt such is based on pure conjecture and open to interpretation. Furthermore, tens of thousands of animals are deliberately denied pain relief while in obvious states of such, the theory being that introducing pain relief would compromise testing results. How can you honestly submit that introducing diseases to animals, subjecting them to pain, suffering, and agony, denying them companionship and comfort, and imprisoning them for life as done from a position of caring? Your claims are nothing but disingenuous rhetoric meant to deceive unknowing people: if you honestly cared about the well-being of animals, you would adamantly oppose vivisection.

Animal experimentation is unnecessary, unjustified, and unprincipled, its only function to financially benefit those who exploit animals; you are not invisible and your actions are indefensible. Animals have rights to live free from pain and suffering regardless of your objections to acknowledge such, and as long as you profit on the torture of animals, complicit in their abuse and death, I will continue campaigning on their behalf.

NAME|ADDRESS|COUNTRY

Click for additional Vivisection Sample Letters that you may use

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