Americans Should Know Where Their Taxes Go, Animal Research Watchdog Group Says

Rats Vaginally Stimulated, Monkeys Losing Weight by Exercising Just Tip of the Iceberg, Says IDA

Washington, DC (April 14, 2010) – Today, as April 15 fast approaches for American taxpayers, In Defense of Animals (IDA) is unveiling its “Top 10 Reasons Why Animal Research is a Cruel Joke” in recognition of ridiculous and wasteful experiments funded by your tax dollars.

“With unemployment sky-high and our economy still suffering from the Great Recession, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) still spends billions of your tax dollars every year to fund animal experiments,” said IDA Research Director Eric Kleiman. “Our own research indicates that this is little more than ‘white-coated welfare’ for experimenters living off of a grant gravy train funded by hard-hit American taxpayers.”

IDA’s “Top 10” list is comprised of NIH-funded experiments that were selected from scientific papers published in 2009 and 2010 (and one from 2008), approved by federally-mandated oversight committees, and published in peer-reviewed journals.

Below is a sampling of experiments that made IDA’s Top 10” List. (Warning:  Entire List Contains Graphic and/or Sexual Content):

* Female rats might enjoy vaginal stimulation (Dartmouth);
* Monkeys lose more weight exercising than eating less (Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health & Science Univ.);
* Lizards forced to fight get stressed and then decapitated (Harvard and Univ. of South Dakota);
* Castrated hamsters can still ejaculate (UC-Berkeley, Univ. of Virginia, Columbia Univ.);
* Baby chimpanzees need nurturing (Emory University / Yerkes National Primate Research Center).

Kleiman noted that thousands of NIH-funded researchers have said that the entire funding system is an “old boys network” in need of fundamental reform. The NIH funds significantly more researchers over the age of 70 than under 30, and 22 researchers received 222 grants worth $170 million. The former head of the National Cancer Institute has stated that this system is a “terrible wasted opportunity,” while a past NIH Director has said that the system provides “disincentives” to “truly transformative” research.

“The experiments at Dartmouth exemplify this tragic truth,” continued Kleiman. “After over 20 years on the grant gravy train, and over 10 years studying rat sexual behavior, this experimenter was awarded a ‘breakthrough’ grant by the NIH for ‘novel scientific ideas’ and ‘high risk, high reward’ research on sexual dysfunction in women. The result? More sexual experiments on rats.”

The published experiments supported by this “breakthrough” grant include:

* The “vaginal stimulation” study, which involved the experimenters holding the rats by their tails, inserting a 1 ml plunger into their vaginas until they contacted the cervix, and delivering 15 total stimulations lasting 2 seconds every 30 seconds;
* Removing rats’ ovaries, giving them hormones, applying lidocaine to numb their vaginas, to find that it made no major difference in their mating rhythms;
* Severing the nerves that connect rats’ genitalia to their brains, to find that they showed abnormal sexual behavior, even though they still desired sex.

“If this is NIH’s idea of ‘breakthrough’ and ‘high risk, high reward’ science, one can only imagine what its ‘normal’ science looks like,” said Kleiman.

“For April 15, we hope this is a wake-up call about where your tax dollars go,” concluded Kleiman. “These experiments are just the tip of the iceberg of waste in biomedical animal research. IDA plans to regularly expose yet more of these ridiculous experiments – to show the sad reality of animal research and the fundamentally broken, taxpayer-supported NIH system that continues to fund this ‘white-coated welfare.’”

IDA’s complete Top 10 list is available at http://idausa.org/ridiculousresearch

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Eric Kleiman, 717-939-3231