2020-10-29 PETA calls on Eli Lilly to ban forced swim test
18 images Created 29 Oct 2020
Bracknell, UK. 29th October, 2020. PETA supporters, including one wearing a costume depicting a beaker of water in which a mouse is struggling to stay afloat accompanied by the words 'Lilly: Not Nice to Mice', protest outside Eli Lilly’s R&D centre to call on the US pharmaceutical company to ban the forced swim test. Animal rights charity PETA UK contends that the forced swim test during which small animals are dosed with an anti-depressant drug, placed in inescapable beakers filled with water and forced to swim to keep from drowning has been widely discredited, with scientists having argued that floating is not a sign of depression or despair but rather a positive indicator of learning, saving energy, and adapting to a new environment and so a poor predictor of whether a drug will work to treat depression in humans, and point out that other pharmaceutical companies including Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Bayer, Roche and AstraZeneca have banned it.
