PETA: The National Institute of Mental Health must act on the results of this landmark study and stop wasting tax dollars on these cruel and useless animal tests.
ZACHARY TOLIVER: ‘A groundbreaking new National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded study published in the leading scientific journal Nature should sound the death knell for the use of mice in cruel depression experiments. In the study, 64 researchers analyzed the brains of mice and humans and found substantial species differences in types of brain cells and the ways they produce proteins critical to neuropsychiatric function. The authors noted numerous “failures in the use of [the] mouse for preclinical studies” because of “so many [species] differences in the cellular patterning of genes”…
It is therefore hardly surprising that NIMH depression experiments on mice (and indeed, other animals), such as the forced swim test, the tail suspension test, and the electroshock test — do not even come close to reflecting human depression with any accuracy, nor that 95% of drugs that test safe and effective in animals end up failing in human clinical trials… The NIMH must act on the results of this landmark study and stop wasting tax dollars on these cruel and useless animal tests…
In response to PETA’s pressure on NIMH to drop the forced swim test and other experiments on mice, Gordon told the prestigious scientific journal Nature, “The National Institute of Mental Health has for some time been discouraging the use of certain behavioral assays, including the forced swim and tail suspension test, as models of depression.” He added, “[T]hese tests in particular are recognized by many scientists as lacking sufficient mechanistic specificity to be of general use in clarifying the neurobiological mechanisms underlying human depression.”
PETA (and anyone with common sense) can see that testing drugs by forcing mice and other small animals to swim for their life or by hanging them upside down by their tail is scientifically worthless and doesn’t benefit the health and well-being of humans… PETA is calling on the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to pull the plug on a set of cruel and scientifically worthless psychological tests on animals carried out and funded by the agency with our tax dollars. PETA’s appeal to end indefensible experiments that terrorize animals follows the release of video footage of an NIMH-funded “social defeat experiment”.’ SOURCE…
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