The Bowdoin Orient

To the Editor:Re: Mice in the house: Bowdoin’s animals in lab research (9/18)

It’s unfortunate that Bowdoin College is again imprisoning and tormenting mice in cruel classroom psychology experiments at a time when many professors are replacing the use of animals with interactive computer simulators and other modern non-animal teaching methods that studies show are more effective.

Mice used in psychology teaching laboratories are often drilled into or injected with drugs before being forced to swim until the point of exhaustion or forced to complete confusing and stressful tasks after which, they’re typically killed.Even though they feel pain and suffer just like cats and dogs—they even wince when they’re hurting— mice are excluded from even the minimal federal protections afforded to some animals in laboratories and the biased university committees that review and approve these experiments are made up almost entirely of animal experimenters.

 Half of Americans—and even more college-aged ones—now oppose experiments on animals and there are more humane and effective ways to do science without hurting animals. Rather than reviving retrograde classroom exercises on animals, Bowdoin should get with the times and embrace superior twenty-first century non-animal teaching methods. To learn more about experiments on animals visit www.peta.org.  Mitch Goldsmith, M.A.Research Associate, Laboratory Investigations DepartmentPeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals