Imagine that you would be thrown into deep water. You try to escape by climbing up the sides, but the walls of the container are just too slippery and steep. You swim wildly; You try to keep your heads above water at all costs so as not to drown. But you are terrified and have no strength left.

At some point you give up and let yourself drift. You do not know if you will ever escape this horror.

What sounds like a nightmare is reality for thousands of mice, rats and other small animals – even today.

The so-called infamous “Forced Swim Test”, ( also known as the “Behavioral Test on Hopelessness”), is a widespread – but completely useless – animal experiment. As you can see in this video, experimenters place mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters or gerbils in a water-filled container from which they can not escape. The animals panic and try to climb out on the sides of the container. Some even dive and look further down for an exit. They paddle wildly to somehow keep their heads afloat. At some point, they are only driving.

This criminal idiocy is being conducted in university and pharmaceutical laboratories to test potential anti-depressants – even in Germany.

We do our utmost to stop animal experiments of any kind. Results from animal experiments can not be transferred to humans, because humans are not 70 kg rats. Already a small detail in the metabolism is enough to cause a completely different reaction to a certain substance.

Depression is a serious illness. However, the pointless attempt with mice and rats described above deprives people with depression of the possibility of true help.

Of the 47 pharmaceuticals identified by PETA USA, namely AbbVie, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, which have been tested in this way in animals, not a single one is currently approved for the treatment of depression in humans. And that, although this test has been done for decades!

Even those who use the forced swim test do not agree on what he really says about the traumatized animals.

Maybe animals that can be drifted earlier than others have not given up yet, but just want to save energy to somehow survive. The experimenters draw wrong conclusions about what could help people suffering from depression. Anyone who has ever had depression knows that the feeling of being drowning is very different from the sensations of depression.

First success – AbbVie stops forced swim test

Following a meeting with PETA USA, AbbVie has undertaken not to perform or finance the forced swim test.
The meeting followed PETA USA’s shareholder resolution, in which a total of four pharmaceutical companies were asked to end the cruel and pointless test.

AbbVie is the first pharmaceutical company to publicly and firmly oppose the near-drowning of animals.
Now it’s time for Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly to follow AbbVie’s lead and challenge the Forced Swim Test.

And now to Germany

In the EU, animal tests applied for since 2012 must be classified in degrees of severity. There is a choice: no restoration of vital functions, low, medium and heavy. The list submitted by the EU, which falls under “severity level”, reads like a horror cabinet:

• Swim to exhaustion to simulate depression (“forced swim test”)
• Electric shocks that the animal can not escape (“learned helplessness”)
• Death from poisoning
• Irradiation with fatal consequences
• death from rejection of transplants
• bone tumors, • xenotransplantation etc …

EU bans, Germany does not!!

The EU bans these “heavy-grade” experiments, but allows exemptions to Member States. And that is exactly what Germany has done in the new version of the Animal Welfare Act: It has made use of pressure from the animal experiment lobby of the exception and allowed even the worst animal experiments.

Implement ban! NOW!

We want Germany to implement the EU’s prohibition on the severity of “heavy” animal testing and to ban these attempts by law. Legally, this is not only possible, but even necessary, because animal welfare is enshrined in the Basic Law and can restrict the freedom of research, which is also constitutionally guaranteed.

Text of the petition: “Rats have to swim to the point of exhaustion, mice are shocked with electric shock until they desperately give up and suffer the pain. Extremely cruel animal experiments such as the “forced swimming test” and experiments on “learned helplessness”, which are commonplace in depression research, are allowed in Germany, although the EU allows a legal ban on such trials with severity “heavy”.

With my signature, I call for a legal ban on animal testing with severity “heavy”!

Please Sign! https://www.aerzte-gegen-tierversuche.de/de/helfen/aktionen/2085#petition

https://www.schwimmen-bis-zur-verzweiflung.de/

My comment: The EU directive / 2010/63 is:
“From an ethical point of view, there should be an upper limit on pain, suffering and anxiety that can not be exceeded in scientific procedures, by prohibiting the use of procedures likely to cause prolonged and unreliable severe pain, distress or anxiety become.”

But it is still tortured in the whole of Europe (in Germany in particular), and experimented with the most brutal sadism against defenseless animals.

Animal experiments is the pure, naked fascism of the stronger one to the weaker.

And the results? Animals that are senselessly tortured to death, a bunch of criminal Nazis who disguise themselves as “researchers” and waste billions from our cash register for their career, and have never brought a result for the good of man.
But these criminal idiots continue to work, they continue to earn, the animals continue to die, and serious illnesses still torment us all.

My best regards to all, Venus