Ad reads: “Imagine having your body left to science…while you’re still in it.”

VANCOUVER, BC – This week, Stop UBC Animal Research ran a provocative, eye-catching half-page ad in two University of British Columbia publications to bring attention to UBC’s experiments on animals (Click here to view the ad). The ad – published in UBC’s new student handbook and the UBYSSEY newspaper – shows a non-human primate screaming and confined to a lab restraint chair and reads: “Imagine having your body left to science…while you’re still in it.”

“Since UBC has repeatedly refused to disclose any details about its experiments on animals, we decided to run the ad to show the grim realities of animal research,” said Brian Vincent, Director of Stop UBC Animal Research. “We hope the ad will get people to start asking UBC what the university is doing to animals behind closed doors.”

The ad kicks off the organization’s fall campaign. Stop UBC Animal Research said it had a series of actions, protests, and other events in the works to raise awareness about UBC’s animal experiments. Since the Vancouver-area group was formed last year, it has exposed UBC’s extensive animal research programs. Every year, UBC conducts thousands of research projects involving animals, including on pigs, mice, cats, rabbits, monkeys, and others. Some of that research employs extremely painful and ultimately, lethal procedures. Nearly all the experiments are done with little public scrutiny.

Stop UBC Animal Research’s months-long investigation of UBC has revealed disturbing details about the university’s research. For instance, one UBC researcher has experimented on cats for 30 years. In his papers, the researcher described how he had cut open the backs of cats to expose their vertebrae, inserted titanium screws into the cats’ spinal columns to inhibit movement, and built restraint chambers around the cats’ exposed vertebra to give researchers access to the cats’ spinal columns and to fix the animals in a sitting position for recording sessions. Stop UBC Animal Research also discovered UBC researchers have:

· Repeatedly poured saline solution into newborn piglets’ lungs to induce respiratory failure

· Exposed mice to cigarette smoke for up to six months in emphysema research

· Injected toxins into monkeys’ brains to simulate “parkinsonism”

· Administered electroconvulsive shock to monkeys to induce seizures

· Blinded monkeys in vision deprivation studies

Click here to view the ad