TO THE EDITOR:
I applaud The Daily Tar Heel who, in a recent editorial, took UNC to task for their support of a state law meant to in part shield campus experiments on animals from public scrutiny and waning public support.
It is not surprising that the University would support such a move considering that eyewitness investigations by PETA have previously found that UNC laboratory staff violently broke the necks of mice, cut the heads of rats with scissors and guillotines and overlooked such severe crowding of mice and rats that it led to cannibalism and suffocation.
In a recent study at UNC, experimenters pulled teeth from the mouths of beagles and then implanted dental hardware into their jaw bones before killing and dissecting them. In another project, UNC experimenters purchased hamsters bred to have congestive heart failure and muscular dystrophy-like symptoms. Experimenters then forced the animals to run on an electrified treadmill until they collapsed in exhaustion and then electrically shocked them in an attempt to keep them running.
Experiments like these are not only cruel, but they also waste time and resources because they are largely irrelevant to humans.
Fortunately, the tide is turning against experiments on animals — according to a recent Pew poll the majority of Americans now oppose it — and try as they might, efforts by UNC and others to reverse that trend are doomed to fail.
Mitch Goldsmith
Research Associate
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
