October 31, 2002

Protect Our Earth’s Treasures (P.O.E.T.), a Columbus-based animal rights organization, will bring the above message to the Ohio State University Board of Trustees on Friday, November 1 at 8:45am in front of the Longaberger Alumni House, 2200 Olentangy River Road.

“The study may have a new name (“Lentivirus and Neural Cells”), but it is the same old senseless, cat-killing experiment, and its reinstatement is an embarrassment to the university community,” says Rob Russell, P.O.E.T. director.

OSU has recently received funding for the nation’s first-ever Mathematical Biosciences Institute, and funding for a program to create an artificial human immune system. Both these dynamic projects will move the university into an exciting future. The “cats-on- meth” experiment drags it back into the dismal past.

Carol Mandell, DVM, PhD, co-author of “Pathogenesis of experimentally induced feline immunodeficiency virus infection in cats” has advised us that “…cats are used because they are cheap to obtain and easy to handle. The genome structure of FIV is very dissimilar to that of HIV.”

Neal Barnard, President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, adds “There are so many legitimate opportunities to study HIV and drug abuse ethically and noninvasively in humans, and, in fact, such studies are already going on. There is no reason for these animal experiments.”

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