Openly Gay Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova Slams ‘Gay Sheep’ Experiments at Two US Universities

Openly gay tennis icon Martina Navratilova is expressing outrage that Oregon State University (OSU) and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the United States are spending millions of public tax dollars on unethical hormone-altering experiments on “gay sheep” that seek to manipulate sheep’s sexual preferences to be heterosexual.

OHSU experimenter Charles Roselli drugs foetal sheep to alter sex hormones in their brains and cuts open the brains of rams he calls “male-oriented” (homosexual) in an attempt to find the hormonal mechanisms behind homosexual tendencies, so they can subsequently be changed. Roselli’s cohort, OSU’s Frederick Stormshak, has surgically installed an oestrogen device in the bodies of “gay sheep” in an effort to make their sexual preferences heterosexual. The test results, which the experimenters have stated they plan to extrapolate to humans, carry the insidious implication that homosexuality in humans could be “cured”.

In letters faxed to the presidents of both universities, Navratilova – who has won nine Wimbledon Women’s Singles championships and holds more overall tennis titles than any other player in history – writes, “How can it be that, in the year 2006, a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments? … For the sake of the animals who will die unnecessarily in these experiments and for the many gays and lesbians who stand to be deeply offended by the social implications of these tests, I ask that you please end these studies at once”.

This is not only a needless slaughter of animals and an ethically indefensible experiment; it has also been condemned by experts on scientific grounds. Dr Malgosia Cegielski, a Portland-based clinical psychologist, calls Roselli’s gay-sheep experiment “frivolous” and “frightening”. She says: “I don’t see any clinical utility or human benefit with what he’s doing. … The gene expression and biological differences at a cellular level between [non-human] animals and humans is so huge. To draw conclusions between animal behavior [and] humans is a joke”.

Read Navratilova’s letters to OSU and OHSU in their entirety.

You can help! Please send polite letters and e-mails to OSU and OHSU asking that they immediately stop the needless use and slaughter of animals in these experiments and instead use taxpayers’ money for beneficial research which does not involve the use of animals or for funding a sexual diversity acceptance and tolerance initiative.

Dr Ed Ray, President
Oregon State University
634 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2128
ed.ray@oregonstate.edu

Joseph Robertson Jr, MD, MBA, President-elect
Oregon Health & Science University
3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road
Portland, OR 97239-3098
Robertjo@ohsu.edu