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For immediate release:
October 1, 2021
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Seattle – PETA today filed a lawsuit against the University of Washington (UW) in the Washington State Supreme Court in King County for its refusal to disclose who exactly works on its Institutional Animal Care and Utilization Committee (IACUC). In accordance with federal laws and guidelines, the UW IACUC Animal Experiment Supervision Committee must review all proposed animal experiments and enforce animal welfare laws in the school’s laboratories, but PETA study found it was unable to prevent animals from starving to death. , dehydration, suffocation, dehydration, burns, blood loss, and more.
If PETA is successful, actions taken by the IACUC, including approval of experimental protocols, in violation of the law, may be invalidated and any such experimental protocols may need to be properly revised again.
The IACUC is the governing body of UW under the Washington DC Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA), which requires public access to committee meetings, but UW hides the names of its members and approves most animal experimentation behind closed doors. IACUC occurs on Zoom, where members are identified (and commonly referred to) simply as “IACUC1”, “IACUC2”, etc., and even these labels don’t apply consistently to the same members. The lawsuit asks the court to order the disclosure of the names of IACUC members and reverse any action taken by IACUC in violation of OPMA.
“This committee is the last line of animal protection at UW’s state-funded labs, including monkeys whose skulls are constantly being cut – but it operates without public scrutiny,” says PETA Senior Vice President Cathy Guillermo. “PETA’s lawsuit seeks to uncover who secretly approves hundreds of highly invasive procedures each year, while failing to properly oversee UW experimenters who starve and scald animals to death.”
Although federal regulations require the IACUC to have a specific membership, including a non-scholar and community member representing the community’s interests in relation to animal management, one of its “non-scientific” members is Ken Gordon, executive director of the Northwest Association for Treatment with animals. Biomedical research encouraging animal experimentation.
In December 2020, PETA filed a related claim regarding the Public Records Act, seeking records and documents related to experimental use and breeding of primates at Washington University’s Washington National Primate Research Center, and the school’s membership in IACUC.
PETA, whose motto is in part that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes arrogance, a worldview focused on human excellence. For more information on collecting news and reporting on PETA investigations, please visit PETA.org or subscribe to the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…
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