Animal Experimentation Issues

Action Alert: Help Stop Inhumane Spinal Cord Classes at OSU

Ohio State University is offering what may be the most inhumane summer course ever taught: A class in injuring the spinal cords of rats and mice.

Participants in OSU’s Spinal Cord Injury Research Techniques Course will be taught how to systematically injure the animals’ spinal cords by major surgery and blunt trauma. Nicknamed “Cruelty 101,” the three-week course subjects 189 rats and 80 mice each year to multiple painful surgeries, laboratory procedures, and distressing behavioral exercises after the injuries. This program is designed to expand the use of rodent experiments, diverting attention and funding away from clinical spinal cord injury research far into the future.

Instead of teaching such crude techniques, OSU should be encouraging future researchers to “think outside the box” and develop and use in vitro and clinical research, imaging, and post-mortem techniques that will truly advance our understanding of human spinal cord injury—and aid the search for a cure.

To support this campaign, PCRM has collected petitions signed by 300 neurologists and neurosurgeons from across the country who oppose the class. You can view a sample petition below. If you are a neurospecialist who would like to sign on, please contact PCRM.

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