Action Alerts

Buckling to pressure from the National Primate Research Centers, who continue to claim a shortage of monkeys for COVID-19 research, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has appropriated $30 million for increasing primate research in the 2022 budget.

CAARE has learned that the government is set to carry out excruciating tests forcing mice and sheep to inhale noxious chlorine gas, even though enough information is already available and there are numerous excellent non-animal alternatives.

The Animal Resource Centre (ARC) in Western Australia, a government subsidized facility that supplies mice and rats to laboratories, recently announced its upcoming closure due to financial difficulties. This closure presents a unique opportunity for the Australian government to invest in non-animal research rather than strive to perpetuate outdated animal experiments.

Please note: this letter can only be signed by U.S. residents because of rules imposed by Congress. International signers can sign our petition here.

Last month we read about a failed clinical trial to determine if antibiotics would help treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a devastating disease that causes fatal scarring in the lungs and has no cure.  The trial was based on previous studies in mice, which showed that antibiotics might be beneficial. However, the human trial showed no benefit for patients, demonstrating once more that animal experiments produce misleading and inapplicable results.

Ringing in the ear, known as tinnitus, has been difficult to treat because it’s hard to study and the causes are unknown. But animal experiments are definitely the wrong way to go.

Laurentian University, in Toronto, Canada, is about to make innocent animals pay the price for their financial problems. Because of staggering debt, the University is shutting down its animal research lab and plans to kill, within days, 200 mice and rats without any attempts whatsoever at placing them in adoptive homes.

Most will never have a name, but they are no different from other animals we know. They need love and companionship but spend their lives in isolation. The rare touch from a human hand is likely to come with pain, callousness and death.

This is the ugly reality for animals used in experiments that we have the power to change.

CAARE's report, From Trauma to Treatment, details the sweeping failure of PTSD experiments on animals to help patients, in contrast to existing, effective treatments and modalities for human-based research.

Yet despite the existence of highly successful therapies to treat PTSD, only 10% of patients currently receive them.

Rather than bridge this gap in access to care, millions of government dollars continue to fund appalling experiments that intentionally traumatize animals, claiming to study PTSD.

History is in the making with the introduction of the Humane Research and Testing Act of 2020 (H.R. 8633). This bipartisan bill, introduced by Representatives Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and Vern Buchanan (R-FL), will enact the boldest steps ever to reduce the use of animals in experiments by establishing the National Center for Alternatives to Animals in Research and Testing (Center) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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.