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Last week, People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals criticized Oregon Health and Science University for a "stupid and bizarre" experiment involving prairie voles. The experiment was meant to test the effects of alcohol on monogamous relationships. After pairs of male and female voles cohabited in small containers for a week, the researchers gave the rodents ethanol, observed their behavior and then euthanized the voles so their brain chemistry could be analyzed. The Oregonian was the first to report on PETA's letter.
In the letter and on a blog post on their website, PETA claimed that "Drunken rodents aren't subjected to the social forces that would have an impact on any fidelity decision made by a human. These experiments aren't anything more than a curiosity-driven boondoggle with a serious body count."
"Even as alcohol-addiction programs cry out for funding and relationship counseling is cost-prohibitive for many couples that need help, in 2017 alone, the federal government has squandered more than $800,000 of taxpayers' money on the OHSU projects that funded these cruel and pointless experiments," another statement reads.
Since voles are monogamous, OHSU has used voles in the previous studies to test the effects of alcohol on relationships. But the previous studies only tested the voles' ability to enter into monogamous relationships, not the effects that alcohol has on two voles that are already a pair. Published in a psychiatric journal last month, the study claimed that "Our studies provide the first evidence that alcohol has effects on established pair bonds and that partner drinking status plays a large role in these effects."
In response to PETA's criticism, OHSU released a statement that said the study's findings "will inform the development of pharmacological and molecular approaches to prevent or possibly reverse the negative effects of alcohol in humans, which could improve relationships that are disrupted by problematic drinking"
PETA has previously accused OSHU of mistreating monkeys used in experiments. In 2012, the US Department of Agriculture fined OSHU $12,000 after a PETA-prompted investigation. Since then, the USDA has issued warnings to the hospital on two separate accounts for mistreatment of lab animals.