PETA is set to unveil its eye-opening exhibit “Without Consent,” which explores the troubled history of experiments on nonconsenting animals. The installation challenges institutions, including the University of California–San Diego, to rethink this exploitative, expensive, cruel, and archaic concept of science. Modeled after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “Without Consent” will be on display locally for five days as part of a national tour. It features 24 panels with descriptions and photographs of nearly 200 animal experiments conducted at U.S. institutions from the 1920s through today. An interactive virtual exhibit is also available here. When: February 6–10 Where: Balboa Park, at El Prado and Village Place, San Diego “'Without Consent' tells the true stories of animals harmed and killed in experiments that they did not and could not consent to,” says PETA neuroscientist and UC–San Diego graduate Dr. Katherine Roe. “Humans are only one animal species among many. Having the power to exploit the others does not give us the right to do so.” The 110 million animals killed every year in U.S. laboratories are individuals who experience pain and fear, yet they’re burned, force-fed chemicals, sickened with disease, and robbed of their babies. At UC–San Diego, experimenters subjected rabbits to electrical shocks in their anal canals and punctured the intestines of mice—releasing feces into their bodies, causing sepsis and death—among other cruel procedures. “Without Consent” also makes the point that vulnerable humans—including orphans in tuberculosis and psychological experiments, immigrant women in gynecological surgeries, soldiers in LSD and poison gas tests, and impoverished Black men in syphilis experiments—were exploited in experiments. Just as society now understands that these experiments were wrong, “Without Consent” shows we need to let a similar moral awakening guide our conduct today by extending consideration to other nonconsenting sentient beings who suffer and die in experiments from floor-cleaner product tests to mother-infant separation studies. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org; follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram; or listen to The PETA Podcast.
