OneClickPolitics

Please end funding for PTSD research on animals

I am writing to express my opposition to the ongoing use of taxpayer funds for animal studies of human post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Each year, millions of taxpayer dollars from the National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. Army Research divisions go toward creating “animal models” of this uniquely human and complex psychological disorder.

This research, which involves intentionally traumatizing animals by inflicting severe pain and stress, offends the sensibilities and is completely unjustifiable.

Valuable human research into PTSD using non-invasive neuroimaging, such as functional MRI among others, provides real-time information on the living brains of PTSD sufferers, producing fully relevant human information. Such research under the VA Healthcare System and other U.S. institutions is producing useful and important information for treating PTSD.

Animal studies of PTSD provide little to no information that we don’t already know from human research. For example, a recent experiment causing PTSD in animals carried out at Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded by recommending agomelatine, a drug that is FDA approved and has already been shown to produce complete remittance of PTSD in a 2012 human case study. A wider clinical trial of agomelatine would be far more valuable than cruel and irrelevant animal experiments.

I urge your agency to raise its standards by eliminating inapplicable animal experiments on PTSD that waste taxpayer funds and perpetuate outdated modalities. These experiments are archaic in their construction and outcomes, cause unacceptable animal suffering, and are a disservice to PTSD sufferers.

Message is going to Dr. Thomas Russell, Director, US Army Research office and Dr. Bruce Cuthbert, Director, National Institute of Mental Health

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