Animal Aid

Animal Aid's Mad Science Awards (AAMSAs) are handed out each year for pointless and grotesque scientific research. Award winners receive a diploma featuring the special AAMSA motif of a laboratory beagle stabbed with a scalpel.

The theme for 2006 is research on rats, who are used in almost half a million experiments in British laboratories each year.

Apart from the fact that they are cheaper to breed and house than dogs or chimpanzees, scientists seek to justify their use by presenting them to the public as mere rodents- life-forms undeserving of any special consideration. In fact, their suffering is regarded as wholly irrelevant.

• Introduction
• Experiment 1: Rats’ screams of pain are recorded
• Experiment 2 : Female rats die trying to pass urine
• Experiment 3 : Deliberate brain damage affects learning in rat strains differently
• Experiment 4 : Deliberate brain damage to rats slows them down
• Experiment 5 : Normal blood pressure varies between different strains of rats
• Experiment 6 : Air pollution is not good for rats either
• Experiment 7 : Rats addicted to cocaine
• Experiment 8 : Rats crippled in nutrition tests

Report researched and written by Andre Menache BSc (Hons) BVSc MRCVS, Scientific Consultant to Animal Aid