Rising terrorist threats, escalating gun violence, and two exhausting wars over the past 15 years have left many Americans increasingly exposed to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Effective treatments for PTSD are available. Yet each year millions of taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) go toward creating “animal models” of this uniquely human and complex psychological disorder.
Such experiments are exceptionally cruel, designed to intentionally inflict great mental and emotional stress – including pain – on animals, to replicate traumatic events.
NIH-funded research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims to induce PTSD in mice using painful electric shocks. Mice were placed in a chamber with an electrified grid attached to the floor. The grid was used to give strong electric shocks to their feet lasting up to 2 seconds to intentionally “traumatize” them.
In another federally-funded experiment at Georgetown University, chemicals were injected into the brains of monkeys to induce a traumatic experience. These experiments are receiving close to a half million dollars each year and have cost American tax-payers over $1.4 million since 2013.
Animal experiments to study PTSD create an artificial and simplistic view of a complex human psychological disorder. Evidence shows that over 90% of behavioral neuroscience experiments on animals fail to translate to humans.
The American Psychological Association, the Veteran’s Administration and the Defense Centers of Excellence all acknowledge that there are effective therapies for treating PTSD.
Increased funding to reach more PTSD victims with current treatments would be of greater value than funding inhumane and imprecise animal experiments.
Let’s not create more victims by subjecting animals to cruel traumatizing experiments. Please sign the petition to end government funding for PTSD research on animals.
I am writing to express my opposition to the ongoing use of taxpayer funds for animal studies of human post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Each year, millions of taxpayer dollars from the National Institute of Mental Health go toward creating “animal models” of this uniquely human and complex psychological disorder.
This research, which involves intentionally traumatizing animals by inflicting severe pain and stress, offends the sensibilities and is completely unjustifiable.
A growing body of evidence shows that over 90% of behavioral neuroscience experiments on animals fail to translate to humans. This number is in agreement with similar observations on the inability of animal models to produce results that are relevant for human medicine, including pharmacology and toxicology.
Twenty-first century science and medicine provide excellent tools for safely and ethically researching the human brain for answers to brain pathology.
Valuable human research into PTSD using non-invasive neuroimaging, such as functional MRI among others, provides real-time information on the living brains of PTSD sufferers, producing useful and important information for treating PTSD.
I urge your agency to raise its standards by eliminating inapplicable animal experiments on PTSD that waste taxpayer funds and perpetuate outdated modalities. These experiments are archaic in their construction and outcomes, cause unacceptable animal suffering, and are a disservice to PTSD sufferers.
