Dear Kazuko,

Tipped off by a distraught former University of California—Irvine (U.C. Irvine) student, PETA learned that the university conducts highly invasive in-class experiments on frogs and rats. The frogs are pithed, which involves piercing the brain and spinal cord with a sharp instrument and moving the instrument around to damage the brain. Then their hearts are removed, and the students remove the frogs' sciatic nerves so that they can run electricity through them.

Rats face an even worse fate. Students drill into the heads of healthy rats, drop in poison and staple the wound shut to create a crude simulation of Parkinson's disease. After giving the rats two weeks to recover, the students poke the rats with blunt sticks to gauge how much brain damage the rats have suffered. The rats are killed at the end of the experiment.

PETA has already contacted U.C. Irvine about these experiments and suggested ways that the school could transition to a humane curriculum. Now, we are calling on you to help end these cruel classroom experiments. Please contact Michael V. Drake, chancellor of U.C. Irvine, and politely ask him to end these experiments and implement humane, non-animal teaching methods in the university's science courses.

Please help us spread the word about the use of frogs and rats in U.C. Irvine's classrooms by e-mailing this important information to your friends.

Sincerely,

Julian Carr
Research Associate
Laboratory Investigations Department
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals