Rats are friendly sociable creatures. They have a good sense of humour, laugh when they are tickled and share jokes with their friends. They are compassionate and if a rat is given a choice of getting food while another rat is traumatised he will opt to stay hungry. Rats are very much like us—and yet physically we have nothing in common. Nothing tested on a rat applies to a human being.

It is so strange that while the world talks about the need for compassion, no one ever thinks about the millions of rats that are killed annually in experiments that result in absolutely nothing.

Cruel try-outs

Most experiments—about 60 percent—are done by wage jobbers, who are simply doing the work to get a monthly salary in a scientific establishment, whereas 30 percent are duplicative experiments. For instance, India does not accept any medical experiments, or experiments on animals for pesticides etc., done internationally even though we have signed an international protocol with OECD. So for no reason our scientists duplicate every experiment. It gives them something to do, considering that most of them are extremely mediocre.  Five percent of the experiments are done by medical students, while only five percent experiments are carried out with any serious intent, out of which only .00001 percent results in anything productive. Even then, nothing that is tested on a rat applies to a human being. It is simply done for the  ‘haathsafai’, to gain experience before moving into real research. Why are rats used at all? Because they are small, non-violent and easy to breed. That is ten million lives gone to waste of beings that are capable of thinking and feeling.

Let me tell you what happens to these little creatures. They are electroshocked in pain studies(to show how much pain a being can bear), mutilated in experimental surgeries (to show whether a being can do without organs, limbs, parts of the brain , burnt skin), and everything from cocaine to methamphetamine is pumped into their bodies. They are given cancerous tumours and are injected with human cells in genetic-manipulation experiments. They have holes drilled into their skulls for invasive brain experiments, are force-fed large quantities of chemicals. When they are ‘used up’ the living mice are thrown into dustbins or coolers.

Commercial companies deliberately breed mice that are genetically predisposed to devastating illnesses like cancerous tumours, obesity, paralysis, a depressed immune system, and high levels of anxiety and depression. These are supplied to labs all over the world.

The experiments done on them are so cruel and unnecessary. These are the same type of people that invent bombs and weapons that kill millions of people.

Painful living

Rats are forced to swim in a pool of opaque water, in which they must find a hidden platform to avoid drowning—supposedly to test their intelligence. I am sure I would fail such a test and so would any child. Does that make us stupid?  They are placed on hot plates, heated to 131 degrees Fahrenheit, to test pain reflexes. Their tails are chopped off without painkillers and large numbers of surgeries are performed on them without anaesthesia or post-surgery painkillers. They can be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, drowned, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged. No experiment, no matter how painful or trivial, is prohibited—and pain-killers are not required. Video footage from inside laboratories shows how rats cower in fear every time someone walks by their cages. They are scared that they will be dragged from their prison cells for an injection, blood withdrawal, a painful procedure, surgery, or death. They see their brethren killed right in front of them.

There are three tests commonly used on millions of animals each year. The Eye Irritancy Testing also known as Draize test, which forces chemicals into the eyes of fully conscious, restrained animals, without the use of  anaesthetics. The extreme pain often causes them to struggle so severely that they break their own backs—dying in agony. The Skin Irritancy Testing, which places corrosive chemicals onto the shaved/raw skin of animals. The Oral Toxicity Testing, which force-feeds strong chemicals to fully conscious animals for 14-28 days until they die.

Currently, experiments using rats, mice, and birds are not subject to the ‘3 R’s’, which bind scientists all over the world—replacement, reduction and refinement. ‘Replacement’ means to use alternatives for animals whenever possible while experimenting. ‘Reduction’ means to limit the number of animals used in an experiment to a minimum. ‘Refinement’ means to minimise the pain and suffering while experimenting on animals.

Please reconsider

When a scientist sets out to conduct an experiment on animals, he must get approval from Institutional Animal Care & Use Committee that will ask about compliance with the 3 R’s. However, nothing applies to mice: you can use as many as you want, causing as much pain as you like, even when a computer model would be just as useful. So any scientist can basically be cruel to these animals for no reason at all. Here are some examples of results that have emerged from killing thousands of little mice: Drug-induced arthritis in rats makes exercise harder. To find this out did we need this expensive experiment paid for by taxpayers?

To prove rats can taste bitter substances, the experimenters slit the throats of ten rats so that one nerve could be cut, and punctured the eardrums of ten other rats so that the other nerve could be severed.

Unfortunately, scientists hide behind  ‘science’ and try and intimidate people, who protest at this misuse of money and animals, simply to get degrees or salaries. It is ethically indefensible to use rats and mice in this fashion. They experience pain, fear, distress, joy and empathy. One ‘researcher’ in Jawaharlal Nehru University spent twenty years on one experiment. He put a mouse on a card in the middle of a tub filled with water. When the mouse could no longer keep awake after hours of struggling, it fell and drowned. The purpose of the experiment: that when a mouse is asleep it cannot do the same things as when it is awake. Basically this man just liked watching fear and death. Do we need people like this in universities or should they be in a lunatic asylum.

To join the animal welfare movement contact [email protected], www.peopleforanimalsindia.org