Action Alert: Help Stop Inhumane Spinal Cord Classes at OSU

Attention PCRM Members! Are you an Ohio State University Alumnus?
PCRM needs your help: Join Our Boycott Now.

Ohio State University (OSU) is hosting a course that many physicians are calling a pointless exercise in cruelty. Nicknamed “Cruelty 101,” the course attempts to instruct students in spinal cord injury research methods. Unfortunately, students will not be focusing on the newest in vitro cell biology, neural cell imaging, and clinical research techniques. Instead, OSU neurologists are teaching the students how to systematically injure the spinal cords of rats and mice using a weight dropped on the animal's exposed spinal cord and then putting the animals through behavioral tests and surgical manipulations.

Hundreds of PCRM members have written to OSU demanding that they implement alternative teaching methods. PCRM physicians and neurologists have tried to meet with OSU administrators. PCRM has even gone to the Ohio State Supreme Court in an attempt to get videos of the procedure from the University.

Throughout the campaign, PCRM has had very specific requests for OSU:

1. The course should be halted immediately. This would give PCRM physicians time to meet with OSU administrators and discuss alternative research strategies.
2. OSU must teach students how to implement non-animal research methods in the study of spinal cord injury. Neurologists and patients alike agree that more animal experiments are not the answer.
3. OSU must implement more transparent research procedures. The public has a right to view procedures that are being performed on rats and mice using federal grant money.

PCRM is calling for a financial boycott of OSU until these conditions are met. This is where we need your help. If you are an alumnus of Ohio State University, please officially sign your name to the boycott by contacting Kristie Stoick, campaign coordinator, at kstoick@pcrm.org or 202-686-2210, ext. 335.

Thank you so much for your help.

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