PCRM Spinal Injury Campaign Forges Ahead:
How You Can Help
 Although
animal experiments have done little to help people suffering from
spinal cord injuries, Ohio State University continues to promote
more of the same, in one of the cruelest classroom exercises ever
devised.
Last summer, PCRM research staff discovered that the university
was offering a class on how to systematically injure the spinal
cords of mice and rats by major surgery and blunt trauma.
OSU rationalizes the course by claiming that more standardized
techniques are needed among researchers. The three-week Spinal Cord
Injury Training Course subjects hundreds of mice and rats to multiple
painful surgeries, laboratory procedures, and distressing behavioral
exercises after the injuries.
A review of the literature shows that years of animal experiments
in this field have yielded little useful information. Instead, spinal
cord injury patients continue to wait for a miracle.
Working with spinal cord injury specialists and local activists,
PCRM mounted a campaign last summer calling on OSU to replace these
crude exercises with some of the more exciting nonanimal
research currently under way. Ads, petitions, and a local letter-writing
campaign have gotten the attention of OSU president Karen Holbrook
but the administration has yet to do the right thing.
PCRM is now asking OSU to meet with a group of our member physicians.
Please join us in petitioning President Holbrook. If you haven’t
yet written, please do. And if you have already written, please
write again. Please also forward our latest action
alert to your colleagues.
Karen A. Holbrook
President
The Ohio State University
205 Bricker Hall
190 North Oval Mall
Columbus, OH 43210-1357
Fax: 614-292-1231
holbrook.79@osu.edu
It’s crucial that we move ahead with real progress for spinal
cord injury patients—both for their sake and for the sake
of the thousands of animals used in needless research each year.
PCRM Online,
January 2005
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