Starting Monday during the final run of a national tour, PETA will bring its eye-opening exhibit “Without Consent,” which explores the troubled history of experiments on animals, to Ohio State University, where animals have suffered acutely in painful, pointless tests. These experiments include using captive-bolt guns to deliver a blow to pigs’ heads with a heavy metal rod (the animals who didn’t die immediately endured hemorrhaging and brain injuries before being killed, bled out, and cut open), submerging baby pigs in a tank full of water-based foam that slowly suffocated them, and inducing strokes in dogs by injecting a blood clot into an artery going to the brain before killing and dissecting them.
When: Monday, April 1, 12 noon
Where: Ohio State University, South Oval (green lawn directly adjacent to the Ohio Union), Columbus
Visitors view PETA’s “Without Consent” exhibit. Credit: PETA
Modeled after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “Without Consent” will be on display locally for five days. It features 28 panels with descriptions and photographs of nearly 200 animal experiments conducted at U.S. institutions from the 1920s through the present. Watch the trailer here. An interactive virtual exhibit is also available here.
“‘Without Consent’ tells the true stories of animals harmed and killed in experiments that they did not and could not consent to,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on Ohio State University and all other institutions to embrace modern, animal-free research, because having the power to exploit other species does not give us the right to do so.”
“Without Consent” also points out 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 that we need to let a similar moral awakening guide our conduct today by extending consideration to the 110 million animals killed every year in U.S. laboratories. These animals are individuals who feel pain and fear, yet they’re robbed of their babies, force-fed chemicals, and sickened with diseases, among other atrocities.
Following its debut in 2021, “Without Consent” has traveled to 29 cities and has shared information about the horrors of experimentation with nearly 15,000 visitors. As neuroscientist and Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik describes it, “‘Without Consent,’ PETA’s new traveling exhibit, is a must-see. … Check it out in a city near you and do your part to help create a better future for all!”
After viewing “Without Consent,” more than 2,500 visitors were moved to contact their legislators, urging them to oppose animal testing and endorse the Research Modernization Deal, which offers a strategy for replacing scientifically useless tests on animals with effective human-relevant research methods.
“Without Consent” will be open to the public at the South Oval at Ohio State University from 12 noon to 4 p.m., from April 1 through 5.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
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