CAARE has revealed that 3-month old rats are “traumatized” through a series of cruel procedures that last days, claiming to study human PTSD.
This is not the way to help PTSD patients.
At Washington State University, scientists are putting animals through hell,
claiming to study PTSD.
CAARE has revealed that 3-month old rats are “traumatized” through a series
of cruel procedures that last days. To start, they are immobilized in
plastic devices for hours, then placed in chambers where they receive
repeated electrical shocks. After that they are forced to swim in cold water
for 20 minutes before being bombarded by alcohol fumes until they lose
consciousness.
The point of all this?
The study claims to show how sleep may be able to help victims of PTSD.
Helping PTSD patients is vital, but as CAARE’s research has shown, appalling
experiments on animals like these at WSU won’t accomplish that. Please join
with CAARE in speaking out by sending a polite letter to authorities to
cancel these experiments in favor of funding effective treatments for
people.
CAARE’s report, From Trauma to Treatment, demonstrates extensively how
animal experiments fail to help people suffering from PTSD while presenting
human-relevant alternatives for researching and treating PTSD. Read the
ENTIRE STUDY
HERE (PDF) -
From Trauma
to Treatment: Addressing the crisis in treating Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder
Instead, these abominable animal experiments siphon money away from
treatments that are known to be highly effective, but right now aren’t
reaching patients.
Treatments like evidence-based cognitive therapies, which have been shown to
have a better than 77% success rate, go underfunded, while experiments on
animals continue, this one with the support of the U.S. Department of
Defense (DoD).
As to that cruel study on rats… the procedures described above are only part
of what they go through.
Brain electrode implant...
They also endured two brain surgeries to implant electrodes in their
heads, with wires threaded through their neck muscles, and tethered to a
recording system for 7 days.
That was done so researchers could subject them to a procedure known as
optogenetics, in which brain cells are injected with proteins that react to
light to control how they respond.
Horrific, “high-tech” animal experiments like this cost millions of dollars.
In 2011, the DoD spent $82 million on “basic research” for PTSD, which
typically means animal experiments.
Just imagine if that money had been spent to bring effective therapies to
hurting patients.
Please send your letter to authorities at WSU and DoD to let them
know it’s time to end this unjustifiable animal abuse and spend the money on
helping people.
Thank you for speaking out for animals in labs!
Return to Alternatives to Animal Testing, Experimentation and Dissection