The Age of Experiments on Animals Is Over
Stomping up to the University of Bristol, PETA “dinosaurs” roared an important message to experimenters: stop using the widely discredited forced swim test.
Watching rats gasp and scramble inside glass containers is not science. This cruel and worthless test actually impedes the development of new treatments and cures. So, we’re calling on the University of Bristol to evolve by dropping the forced swim test in favour of superior, non-animal research methods.
What Happens in the Forced Swim Test?
The forced swim test has been used by experimenters for decades in crude attempts to study human depression and find new antidepressant drugs for humans.
Experimenters place rats, who may or may not have been dosed with a substance, into inescapable beakers of water and watch them paddle furiously in search of an exit, desperately trying to keep their heads above water.
The animals are put through this ordeal on the assumption that the time it takes for them to stop swimming and start floating can tell us something about clinical depression in humans.
The test’s inability to identify antidepressant treatments has even been recognised by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
Don’t Be a Dinosaur
Help the University of Bristol enter the 21st century by urging it to reject this cruel experiment and embrace superior, non-animal research methods:
