La cativera dell'essere umano

Dear laura,

A dog is shoved into a metal "inhalation chamber" inside a U.S. government laboratory. Deadly poisons begin to seep in through the vents. The dog scrambles to escape, but soon his legs turn to jelly and he is too weak to stand. He lies on the floor, frightened about the fact that his body is starting to convulse uncontrollably, and suffers a slow, painful death. His death was funded by your tax dollars—and we want to stop other animals from suffering the same fate.

The online "Stop Animal Testing" Challenge ends on October 31, and time is running out to help PETA reach our $250,000 goal. Please make a generous gift online right now to have it doubled—dollar for dollar—and do twice as much to save animals from suffering and dying in laboratories.

The U.S. government's massive animal testing programs are responsible for the needless deaths of millions of individual animals:


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences are responsible for the suffering and deaths of tens of thousands of animals in chemical toxicity tests. The fact that the EPA has only banned a handful of toxic chemicals, including many known to be harmful to people, demonstrates just how pointless these experiments are. Rather than develop more effective non-animal testing methods or adopt one of the many internationally accepted non-animal tests, these agencies continue to waste taxpayer dollars on tests that result in the deaths of animals.


NASA has announced plans to squander $1.75 million on a crude experiment in which as many as 30 squirrel monkeys will be exposed to a large, harmful dose of radiation. The monkeys will then spend years locked in cages so that experimenters can watch as the radiation destroys their brains and bodies. NASA is ignoring more modern, more accurate testing methods as well as the recommendations of the European Space Agency, which recently spoke out against the use of monkeys in space experiments.


For more than 25 years, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) has poisoned mice, rats, rabbits, and other animals with massive doses of pesticides, drugs, and other chemicals to see if they develop cancer. Yet a groundbreaking PETA report titled "Wasted Money, Wasted Lives" proves that NTP's cancer studies (which have cost taxpayers more than $1 billion and counting) have been of little to no use to health authorities. The chief of the NTP's experimental pathology laboratory has even admitted that "we don't know what the findings really mean."


It's time to end this needless slaughter of animals. With your support, we can stop more tests—and save more animals.

PETA is leading the fight to stop government-backed experiments on animals. We're putting pressure on lawmakers to reform government regulatory testing policies, stop ghastly experiments like NASA's planned irradiation tests, and cut off the flow of taxpayer money that is wasted on cruel animal experiments.

PETA's fight to end government-funded animal testing isn't limited to the U.S. In 2002, PETA spearheaded the formation of an official nongovernmental organization to gain entry into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which helps set international chemical-testing guidelines. This has allowed PETA and other international animal rights organizations to influence testing policy in the 32 OECD member nations, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and the European Union's member states. We've helped win the acceptance of new non-animal testing methods and promoted the replacement of several of the cruelest experiments on animals, sparing tens of thousands of animals from suffering and dying in chemical-poisoning tests.

Don't let the government kill animals in your name. With your support, we can end government-funded animal testing. But our online "Stop Animal Testing" Challenge is nearly over. Please donate now to have your gift doubled to save animals in laboratories.

Thank you for supporting this important fight.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

P.S. There are just days left in PETA's "Stop Animal Testing" Challenge, and we're still 40 percent short of our $250,000 goal. Please donate now to have your gift doubled for animals in laboratories.