About Us Animal Justice Project is an innovative, dynamic, and proactive international animal rights organization seeking maximum effectiveness using the media, online advocacy, education outreach, scientific research, and creative street actions. We work primarily for the abolition of the exploitation of animals in laboratories and farms, for breeding, research, and education. www.animaljusticeproject.com 818.471.7573 julia@animaljusticeproject.com The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is a non-profit non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public through the research, analysis, and dissemination of information on the government’s effects on the economy. TPA, through its network of taxpayers holds politicians accountable for the effects of their policies on the size, scope, efficiency, and activity of government, and offers real solutions to runaway deficits and debt. Ultimately recognizing that the greatest power of change rests with the millions of Americans across the country who are ready for a smaller, more accountable government, TPA is a catalyst for connecting taxpayers to their government officials. www.protectingtaxpayers.org 202.930.1716 davidwilliams@protectingtaxpayers.org
“Mice are not humans, and tests on animals often fail to mimic human diseases or predict how the human body responds to new drugs.” Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D Animal Justice Project USA and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance have united to uncover an epidemic of deplorable government spending on recreational drug experiments on animals as part of the Animal Justice Project USA’s ‘Deadly Doses: A Legal Low’ campaign. The experiments not only appear to be of no value to human health but also lead to the needless suffering and death of countless animals. In total, we identified 95 experiments related to the effects of recreational drugs on helpless animals. These trials occurred at 21 prestigious institutions including Yale, Stanford, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the University of Texas Health Science Center, UCLA, Scripps Research Institute, the University of Florida, USC, and Arizona State. While generally providing little value to science or to human health, and harming an untold number of creatures, the studies came at great expense to U.S. taxpayers. In total, Americans spent more than $150 million funding the scientifically unjustifiable procedures cataloged by the Animal Justice Project USA and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. We then chose the top-10 most wasteful, deplorable, and heartbreaking examples of unnecessary animal testing in order to demonstrate the outrageous, and expensive, realities of this growing problem. Those 10 examples, which killed thousands of animals and cost taxpayers more than $31 million, are featured in this report.
“Shockingly, rats, mice, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish are not regulated under the Animal Welfare Act, which means that it is not only legal for these creatures to remain uncounted during experiments, but absolutely anything can be done to them inside laboratories.”
Monkeys, rabbits, rats, mice, and fish were the most common animals used in publicly funded experiments. The actual number of animals killed or injured during these trials is impossible to calculate as many of the proposals studied do not state the actual number of animals involved. Shockingly, rats, mice, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish are not regulated under the Animal Welfare Act, which means that it is not only legal for these creatures to remain uncounted during experiments, but absolutely anything can be done to them inside laboratories.
“These creatures are subjected to electric shocks, are put on hot plates, starved, and isolated in an endless exercise in suffering. Experimenters even put clamps on animals’ sciatic nerves and paws to create constant chronic pain.” surgically implanted into their brains.
The facts and figures included in this report are publicly available through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the National Institutes of Health’s website. Descriptions of the taxpayer-funded projects tell the stories of animals subjected to forced addiction, made to endure excruciating injections into their skulls and faces, and submerged in hot water. These creatures are subjected to electric shocks, are put on hot plates, starved, and isolated in an endless exercise in suffering. Experimenters even put clamps on animals’ sciatic nerves and paws to create constant chronic pain. Monkeys are forced into restraint jackets and hooked up to stainless steel injection probes
Some of these experiments have been going on for as long as 30 years, and have been duplicated in multiple institutions in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom. The experimenters who benefit from government grants to further their careers are subject to no oversight to produce actual results. These unconscionable tests on animals are commonly used to produce papers that are published to provide job security for people performing the experiments – at great cost to both taxpayers and the animals involved in the procedures. It is the hope of Animal Justice Project USA and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance that thousands of animals and millions of tax dollars are saved by uncovering the expensive and scientifically irrational practice of hurting, maiming, and killing innocent animals in order to perform research on the effects of recreational drugs. Congress owes it to taxpayers to investigate the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the main funding body of recreational drug experiments in animals, to determine why so many animals are dying and so much money is being spent on research that can rarely be applied to humans. Deadly Doses: Recreational Drug Experiments & How It Wastes Millions of Tax Dollars
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THE TOP 10
TAXPAYER-FUNDED USELESS ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS COST: $9.6 million PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Determine Whether LSD Causes Rabbits to Blink Their Eyes More Frequently. The Drexel College of Medicine in Pennsylvania has been awarded more than $320,000 a year for the past 30 years by the National Institute of Mental Health to perform a number of seemingly absurd studies that harm animals with little or no apparent benefit to science. One of the studies involved researchers injecting LSD into the brains of rabbits to determine whether the drug induced an increase in eye blinks and head bobbing. COST: $7.6 million PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Observe Whether Psychedelic Drugs Cause Mice’s Heads to Twitch. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has awarded the University of California, San Diego a total of $7,625,000 to investigate whether hallucinogenic drugs induce head twitching in mice. In one experiment, 144 mice aged only six to eight weeks old had magnets cemented to their heads. They were injected subcutaneously with one of three ‘designer’ psychedelic drugs, including 2C-I, 25I-NBOMe, and 25I-NBMD (a.k.a. 25I, N-bomb, smiles, 25B), and placed into a glass cylinder surrounded by magnometer coils. After being injected with doses of up to 10 mg of drug, the head twitches of the mice were measured for 20 minutes. The experiment did, indeed, conclude that a massive amount of psychedelic drugs induced head twitches in mice. This research facility has been given $305,000 per year for 25 years to figure out the rate that rats and mice twitch their heads when subjected to ‘designer’ drugs. COST: $6.6 million PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Torture Mice With Heat While Being Injected With Morphine, Cocaine, and Other Drugs At the University of California, Los Angeles, 199 genetically manipulated mice were used in one experiment. The mice had a catheter implanted into their jugular vein and were “trained” to self-administer Remifentanil (a potent short-acting synthetic opiate). The mice were given escalating doses of morphine for 6 days. They were then put into a cylinder which was placed on a 144 degree hot plate to measure how many times the animals jumped or licked their paws. This was repeated with the mice both on morphine and off morphine. A second group of mice was put into a cotton sleeve and had their tails dipped in 120 degree water. A portion of a third group of mice had tubes implanted into their skulls and saline, morphine and cocaine were injected directly into their brains. The experiments concluded with the mice being injected with Etorphine (a drug intended for large animals like elephants) into their body cavity and killed twenty minutes later. This experiment took place in 2014, but UCLA has been conducting this same experiment since 1988. Since 2009, one of the lead researcher involved in this project, David Jentsch, snatched at least $4,357,376 from taxpayers to perform tests involving administering drugs to animals. Another researcher involved with the experiment, Christopher Evans, received $2,231,050 in federally funded handouts from the NIDA in 2015 alone.
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COST: $1.9 million PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Find Out if Ecstasy or Cocaine is More Addictive to Baby Female Rats. Scripps Research Institute is another animal laboratory that receives massive amounts of grants from the NIDA. In just one of many examples, Scripps was awarded $375,000 per year for 5 years, from 2011 to 2015, to determine whether female rats would become as addicted to MDMA (a.k.a. ecstasy or molly) and Mephedrone (a.k.a M-CAT, drone, bubble) as they do to cocaine in experiments. In one experiment, 54 young female rats that were just a few weeks old had catheters surgically implanted in their backs or into their jugular veins. The rats were then trained to obtain food by pressing a lever. A syringe pump attached to a catheter later replaced food and when the animals subsequently press the lever it instead delivers a dose of MDMA or Mephedrone. The drugs are given in increasing amounts until the end of the experiment when the rats are killed and their brains autopsied. COST: $1.6 million PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Establish Whether Female Rats Are More Likely to Become Addicted to Cocaine Than Male Rats The National Institute on Drug Abuse gave $320,000 every year for 5 years to the University of California, Santa Barbara to examine the impact of sex and estrous cycles on cocaine abuse. Researchers hypothesized that female rats might have a higher propensity for cocaine abuse than males. Female and male rats had catheters implanted into their jugular veins, which ran under their skin and out of their backs between their shoulder blades. The catheters were checked to see if they worked by an injection of fast-acting barbiturate. If the rats appeared unresponsive, the animals endured a second surgery, which involved the implantation of a catheter into their jugular vein. Cocaine was then injected into the catheters and the rats subjected to “run tests.” The results of the experiment concluded that sex might not play a part in cocaine addiction, after all. COST: $1.5 million PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Discern Whether Meth is Toxic to Mice Brains For at least the past 5 years, the University of Florida School of Medicine has been given tax dollars to research whether methamphetamine abuse results in degenerative brain disorders in animals. In 2014 alone, they were granted $330,777 for an experiment involving 36 baby mice that were no more than a month old. Half the mice had methamphetamine injected into their bodies, while the other half were injected with saline. At the end of a 14-day period of daily injections, the mice were slaughtered and their brains were studied. The researchers concluded, at the surprise of no one, that methamphetamine abuse did appear to have a toxic effect on the brain. How ever, even after 5 years the lab workers are still unable to determine exactly why the meth causes a toxic effect to mice brains, so the researchers want to continue this study, at the cost of more money to taxpayers and the expense of more animals’ lives. COST: $1.1 million PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Force Monkeys to Become Addicted to Meth At Virginia Commonwealth University, primates were forced to consume methamphetamine until they were addicted to determine if they would choose food over the drug in experiments that took place as recently as 2014. Six male monkeys had catheters surgically implanted into their femoral or jugular veins. The monkeys had a customized steel tether and jacket to stop them from pulling the catheters out. The drugs were administered through the catheters in increasing doses over a period of 7 to 10 days at a time. Funded by the NIH and NIDA, grant amounts totaled $1,146,156 over a period of 3 years. Deadly Doses: Recreational Drug Experiments & How It Wastes Millions of Tax Dollars
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COST: $709,981 PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Study Whether Lonely Rats are More Likely to Become Addicted to Drugs. The University of Kentucky was awarded $709,981 in 2014 to determine whether a higher standard of housing and a few friends to play with reduced rats’ willingness to ingest drugs. Rats were raised from babies to adulthood in either an enriched environment (with other rats and objects to interact with) or in isolation. Both sets of rats had catheters surgically implanted into their jugular veins so methamphetamine could be injected directly into their veins. Despite spending nearly three-quarters of a million dollars on the project, the experiment proved to be a bust. It turns out that environment plays no significant role in methamphetamine addiction in rats. COST: $300,000 PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Starve Rats, Then Inject Them With Cocaine. At the University of California, Irvine, rats were starved to 85 percent of their body weight in part to train them to use food delivery levers. They then had catheters surgically implanted into their jugular veins in order to inject cocaine. The rats were divided into three groups, including one group that received cocaine-laced pellets if his or her “partner” rat pressed the correct lever, and another that continued to receive cocaine injections. The rats were given cocaine once daily for two weeks in an attempt to determine whether the method by which cocaine is consumed (i.e., injected or taken orally) impacts its addictive properties. In this particular experiment, a number of rats that digested the cocaine did not react in the way in which the experimenters wanted, so the results were thrown out. Other rats died before the experiment even began. Results from this already flawed study clearly have no substantial impact on human drug addiction, given that motivational behavior in humans is entirely different than that of rats in a laboratory. This protocol has been funded with approximately $300,000 in taxpayers’ money for 5 years by the NIDA. COST: $249,000 PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Learn If Monkeys Make Good Decisions After Having Cocaine Injected Into Their Brains. In 2014, UC Berkeley researchers received $249,000 from the NIDA to inject cocaine directly into the brains of two rhesus macaque monkeys. A specifically designed electrode was implanted into the monkeys’ brains in order for researchers to inject substances directly into the anterior cingulate cortex − an area of the brain difficult to access, as it is several millimeters from the surface of the brain. The procedure is extremely invasive and highly painful post-surgery. The experiment was an attempt to determine whether cocaine plays a role in good decision-making.
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CONCLUSION These top-10 examples of taxpayer-funded useless animal experiments are just the tip of a very large iceberg. Many of the researchers behind these trials have expansive careers, some spanning decades, in which the same tests are repeated using the same animal model at great expense to taxpayers. Other than the prospect of publishing papers with their findings, it is difficult to understand any reason why researchers would want to engage in the scientifically dubious practice of employing animal testing to study the impact of recreational drugs on humans. As stated, the majority of animals used are not even covered by basic Animal Welfare Act regulations and are treated with indifference and discarded like trash. Further, there is little evidence that these thousands, perhaps millions, of injured, abused, and slaughtered animals have contributed anything to the health and wellbeing of humans. It is hard to identify any relevance or applicability to using animal tests to provide knowledge about the very real human condition of drug addiction. In fact, if using animals to test the effects of recreational drugs has taught researchers, policymakers, and the public anything, it is that animals should not be killed and tax dollars should not be wasted on these troubling and unnecessary experiments.
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