PETA to stage `alien invasion’ to dramatize lab animals’ plight

A new virtual reality experience is coming to Hollywood Wednesday, but this one is far from the fun-and-games usually associated with the technology.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals will conduct the event from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday on the roof of its Bob Barker Building on Sunset Boulevard. Subjects will don headsets to see and hear what laboratory animals experience as they undergo medical and other experiments.

” `Aliens’ will crash-land on PETA’s rooftop, transport people to a spaceship and subject them to terrifying experiments that resemble what animals face in laboratories,” PETA said.

The subjects will include a handful of social media influencers and other celebrities who have not been revealed.

PETA’s Kenneth Montville said the experience is not graphic, but is “incredibly disturbing and impactful.”

“They’ll watch their friends have tubes shoved down their throats, be forced to inhale chemical fumes and experience cold, cramped cages, knowing that they’re next,” Montville told City News Service.

“What happens in these labs — burning, poisoning, crippling, blinding — would be considered criminal activity if it happened anywhere else,” Montville added — yet “no experiment, no matter how painful or cruel, is prohibited by federal law.”

Wednesday’s event is part of the organization’s “Abduction” campaign, which is touring college campuses across the country that house facilities identified by PETA as particularly cruel to animals.

The tour began at George Washington University last week, visited Yale this week, and has future stops planned at Harvard and MIT, “most of which have received multiple animal welfare violations,” Montville said.

“The launch of ‘Abduction’ marks the first time people are getting a first-person glimpse into the horrors experienced by frightened and confused animals in barren laboratories,” PETA Senior Director Rachelle Owen said. “PETA is rallying people across the country to demand a switch to superior, non-animal research that leaves our fellow Earthlings in peace.”

PETA claims that studies show “90% of all basic research — most of which involves animals — fails to lead to treatments for humans.” The group is calling on universities “to pivot to sophisticated, human-relevant research methods.”

Montville told CNS that polls show a “clear majority of Americans oppose animal testing for experimentation,” adding that they don’t provide us with “any useful data” for developing better treatments for humans.

“We’re looking for a better way,” he said, espousing the group’s research-modernization deal. Its recommendations include:

— Immediately eliminating animal use in fields of research for which animals have been shown to be bad “models” for humans and have impeded progress;

— Rebalancing public funding of medical research so that the majority goes to animal-free research methods;

— Conducting scientific reviews of the efficacy of animal use;

— Implementing a cost-benefit analysis system for research involving animals that includes an ethical perspective and consideration of lifelong harm inflicted on animals, such as is used in the United Kingdom; and

— Working with other world leaders to promote international acceptance of high-tech non-animal testing strategies in regulatory toxicity testing.

Montville said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with PETA to phase out animal research, but progress with other government agencies — most notably the National Institutes of Health — is slow.

Aside from Wednesday’s virtual reality demonstration, no official “Abduction” stops are currently planned for the West Coast.

Officials with research labs at USC and UCLA did not respond to a request for comment on PETA’s campaign.

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