Have you ever seen physical harm done to someone else? felt it myself?
This unpleasant reaction is your brain’s way of empathizing with the pain of another living being, and you will not be able to avoid it when you watch. This Video mice struggle to crawl, dragging their paralyzed hind legs…
The footage was taken after experimenters at the Ruhr University in Bochum in Germany cut open the scalp of newborn mice, injected them with substances into their brains, and then, seven weeks later, crushed part of their spinal cord to paralyze them. At the end of the experiment, the mice were sacrificed and dissected.
Look in the mirror and then at the mouse. While you may have the same emotional difficulties, such as the ability to empathize, the scientist does not need to understand that the physiology of humans and other animals is very different.
Systematic scientific reviews have proven that animals are not suitable for studying human spinal cord injury. Such experiments do not produce results that are applicable to human patients.
Because of the enormous physiological differences between species, the only drug available for spinal cord injury has been tested in a variety of animals, but with very different results. What’s more, the National Institutes of Health recognizes that 95% of new drugs that are tested for safety and efficacy in animals end up failing in human clinical trials, wasting valuable time and money.
It’s time for experimenters to realize that ethical approaches and cutting-edge research methods such as tissue engineering using human stem cells, human organelles, bioprinting, microfluidics, and human clinical trials go hand in hand.
By adopting animal-free research models, scientists can give patients real hope for the treatments and drugs they so desperately need.
Upon hearing from PETA, the Ball Corporation has cut funding for such horrific animal experiments with spinal cord injury. Now is the time for all experimenters at the Ruhr University of Bochum in Germany and elsewhere to move on to modern animal-free research.
Call on Congress to support Peta’s progressive research modernization deal