As the world surpasses a million deaths from COVID-19, you’d expect its brightest minds to be taking advantage of human cell–based models, banks of supercomputers, and other cutting-edge testing tools to produce the best chance at success in developing effective vaccines and treatments.
Yet today, monkeys, mice, ferrets, hamsters, and other animals are still being deliberately infected with the novel coronavirus, force-fed or injected with drugs, and killed. This is despite decades of failed animal experiments and the chasm of genetic and physiological differences between humans and other animals, who don’t suffer from COVID-19 as we do.
In a time when so many people are suffering because of the pandemic, experimenting on animals is unethical, unjustifiable, and potentially dangerous.
Now is your best opportunity to do twice as much to help end crude and cruel tests on animals. Until 31 October, every gift you make through PETA’s “Stop Animal Testing” challenge will be matched, meaning that if we reach our £250,000 goal, we’ll have half a million pounds to give an immediate boost to our critically important work to end the abuse.
When politicians and decision-makers need a push to recognise the cruelty and wastefulness of animal testing, it falls to kind people like you and other PETA members to demand that humans do better. PETA and our international affiliates are pressuring the World Health Organization, other global coordinating bodies, and the UK government to focus on sophisticated, human-relevant methods in the search for safe and effective COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. We are also working determinedly to oppose all use of animals in experiments and to promote the development and application of superior, non-animal methods. Please join this exciting campaign by donating to the “Stop Animal Testing” challenge right now.
With your help, we can build on the tremendous progress PETA and our affiliates have made in recent years. Consider these advances:
- One potential COVID-19 vaccine – and likely more to come – has skipped some of the ordinarily required animal tests to go straight to human trials! Scientists with PETA and our affiliates have been saying for decades that tests on animals are poor predictors of human outcomes, and today, drug regulators are finally beginning to see how these flawed tests can stymie progress.
- When many countries ran low on ventilators, PETA US was able to prevent animals from being tormented for this life-saving medical equipment. Our affiliate recommended the use of a human simulator to South American doctors and engineers who’d planned to test a new ventilator on pigs. They agreed – and the ventilator is already showing promise for human patients.
- The PETA International Science Consortium Ltd. helped fund the development of a first-of-its-kind model of the lower respiratory tract, and now, similar models using human respiratory tissue are available to researchers studying COVID-19 infection and screening for potential treatments.
- After PETA exposed the neglect and abuse of horses on farms in India where their blood is forcibly taken and used to make antitoxins, a German biotech company recently created the first human-derived antibody effective against the novel coronavirus.
We must raise as much as possible during our special matching-gift challenge if we’re to prevent living, feeling beings from being infected, drugged, tormented, and killed in laboratories around the world. Give to the “Stop Animal Testing” challenge and your donation will be doubled.