Group Had Urged School to Replace Cruel Laboratory With Interactive Computer Simulation
For Immediate Release:
March 15, 2011
Contact:
Robbyn Brooks 202-483-7382
Dallas — Following a year-long campaign, PETA has learned via an open records request that a University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) neuroscience class has dropped a cruel and deadly classroom experiment on rats from its curriculum. In the experiment, students drilled holes into dozens of rats' skulls, intentionally damaged the animals' brains with a toxic chemical, injected them with drugs, forced them to perform in behavioral experiments, and then killed them and cut out their brains.
"UT Dallas' laudable decision to modernize its curriculum will spare the lives of dozens of rats and create a more humane learning environment for aspiring scientists," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "Rats are gentle, social, and intelligent animals, and treating them like disposable laboratory equipment has no place in the 21st century."
PETA, UT Dallas students, and thousands of compassionate people across the country had urged the school to replace the cruel and crude rat experiments with an interactive computer program that simulates all aspects of the animal laboratory. The program is in use at other universities and is available free of charge on the Internet. Although the animal laboratory has been dropped, it is unclear whether this program is being used or if the lesson has been removed from the class entirely.
In 2009, after receiving information from PETA, the University of California–Irvine—where the UT Dallas professor who led the rat experiment previously taught the same course—announced that it was replacing the experiment with non-animal methods.
PETA's past correspondence with UT Dallas is available. For more information, please visit PETA.org.