NIH Directs Tax Dollars On Racist Mouse Experiments

Perhaps it should come as no surprise to anyone that experimenters who imprison, maim, and kill living things in the laboratory can also conduct racist tests.

But you won’t believe it.

At the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), experimenter Lisa Tussing-Humphries is engaged in force mice to fight each other to mimic the “structural violence seen in urban [African American] community “. The National Institute of Minority Health and Inequality in Health (NIMHD) funds it with our tax dollars. Purpose? Presumably to find out why colorectal cancer disproportionately affects African Americans. In other words, she tortures mice in racist experiments using more than $ 840,000 from taxpayer funds to no one benefit.

Every year, millions of mice are used in cruel and useless taxpayer-funded experiments like the one at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This is why PETA is urging NIMHD Director Eliseo H. Perez-Stable to stop funding this experiment. As PETA notes in our letters, forcing mice to fight each other clearly does not accurately mimic the real life experiences of black Americans, and the Tussing-Humphries experiment ignores systemic racism and other complex socioeconomic factors that create health inequalities in communities of color.

We also contacted Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, to ask the administration to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to stop spending a disproportionate portion of its research budget on white animal experimenters. Reports show that applications for funding made by African American investigators are less likely to receive funding than applications made by white investigators. One reason is this: Black candidates are more likely to propose studies that focus on health inequalities, patient intervention, and include humans rather than animals.

It is clear that the NIH’s research priorities, recruiting practices, and grant review processes need major reform. Accepting the PETA Research Modernization Agreement, which outlines a plan to phase out the use of animals in experiments, would be an effective step towards equal opportunity and compassionate research.

Tell UIC to stop the mouse-fighting experiment and tell NIMHD to fund it and instead focus on animal-free research methods that give minority communities real hope for effective treatment and disease prevention.