A University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School (UMass Chan) experimenter is bleeding dry federal coffers while infecting animals with blood-sucking parasites—and somehow these are only the latest depraved tests PETA has uncovered at the university.

UMass Chan’s toxic petri dish of cruelty has produced Matt Gounis, who gives dogs strokes, starves them, and carves them open. And Heather Gray-Edwards, who breeds animals to develop neurodegenerative diseases, causing them to suffer seizures, swollen brains, and more, sometimes without pain relief.

Aroian deliberately infects animals with hookworms (pictured here), roundworms, and whipworms.

Now, PETA has found the latest spawn: Raffi Aroian, who makes a comfortable living by infecting hamsters, mice, and rats with parasites, often suppressing their immune systems so the parasites can eat away at their insides for longer periods. These parasites embed in the animals’ intestinal walls and feed on them, leading to tissue injury, inflammation, and chronic blood loss. He kills all the animals in the end, but not before they endure days, if not weeks, of pain and discomfort while incubating legions of parasites. Aroian harvests those parasites from the dead animals and often reuses them in other animals.

For this, Aroian has leeched $20.5 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1998. His two active grants are worth $1.4 million.

Blood-sucking Parasites …

Aroian’s experiments are gruesome. He infects hamsters, mice, and rats with various parasites and allows them to grow to adulthood inside the animals, who likely experience a host of serious health problems. Aroian forces them to incubate intestinal worms, sometimes for weeks, before killing them.

… In Hamsters

Aroian injects hamsters with hookworm larvae, then watches as the hookworms lodge in the hamsters’ intestines and feed on their blood.

Sometimes, Aroian gives repeated injections of drugs to suppress the hamsters’ immune systems, increasing the likelihood of infection and prolonging the time the hamsters endure the hookworms. He keeps the hamsters alive for 12-19 days while the parasites slowly eat away at their insides. Then he kills the hamsters, removes their intestines, and harvests the hookworms.

… In Mice

Aroian infects mice with whipworms. He lets the parasites grow to adulthood, a process aided by the mice’s compromised immune systems. The parasites feed off the mice for up to several weeks, likely causing them to suffer intestinal inflammation, discomfort, and other signs of illness. They’re all killed when the parasites reach adulthood.

… In Rats

Aroian torments rats to keep a steady supply of parasites for more experiments. He accomplishes this by injecting 6-week-old rats with between 500 and 1,000 larvae of intestinal worms. The parasites reproduce, and new larvae are passed in the rats’ feces, which are collected, prepared, and used in the next round of infection.

Solitary Confinement and No Water

Like his UMass Chan compatriots, Aroian can’t abide by federal regulations.

UMass Chan staff found that in April 2024, Aroian kept hamsters in solitary confinement in violation of approved rules. The university’s animal care committee, which oversees the treatment of animals used in experiments, forced Aroian to immediately rewrite his protocols establishing if and when he can cage hamsters alone. The incident was reported to NIH’s enforcement division.

A little more than a month later, staff moved hamsters in Aroian’s laboratory to new cages to collect their feces. Two were absent-mindedly left in their original cages, where they went without water for 16 hours. The animal care committee reported the incident to NIH, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited UMass-Chan. The school’s animal care committee put Aroian and his laboratory under mandatory supervision for six months—a highly unusual move that speaks to the degree of incompetence and negligence permeating his lab.

A Waste of Life

Aroian’s life work is pointless, and the misery he inflicts on animals daily is inexcusable.

His experiments are scientifically unsound. The parasites Aroian is using aren’t the same species as those that infect humans. The full parasite life cycle is often not replicated, and the animals are kept in barren conditions with restricted diets, which alter their gut bacteria and changes how infections develop and how treatments work. To top it off, hamsters, mice, and rats respond to infections and drugs differently than humans.

These experiments are highly unlikely to translate to anything usable for human treatment. He’s just tormenting and killing animals.

Get Involved

Please add your voice to ours. TAKE ACTION today and urge UMass Chan to get out of the cruel and pointless animal tormenting business altogether and switch to human-relevant, non-animal research methods.

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