“I Can’t Watch Anymore”: Six Celebrities React in Horror to Experiments on Animals
Kate Lawler, Amanda Abbington, Kirsty Gallacher, and other compassionate celebrities were visibly shaken after witnessing the suffering inflicted on animals in laboratories.
In a powerful new PETA video, six celebrities watch footage from animal experiments and confront the pain and terror endured by animals behind laboratory doors.
Presenters Kate Lawler, Kirsty Gallacher, and Gail Porter, alongside actors Amanda Abbington, Roxy Shahidi, and Jamie Bamber, recoil, turn away, and break down in tears as they see monkeys being restrained, tubes forced down rats’ throats, and other frightened animals suffering during experiments.
“It’s Barbaric. It’s Inhumane.”
“I can’t watch anymore,” says Kirsty Gallacher, looking away from the footage with tears in her eyes.
Gail Porter is equally appalled: “It’s disgusting, it’s barbaric, it’s inhumane, it’s vulgar.”
The footage offers only a glimpse of what animals can endure in laboratories. Every year, millions of monkeys, dogs, rats, mice, birds, horses, and other animals are used in experiments in the UK. They may be poisoned, cut open, blinded, electrocuted, infected with diseases, or subjected to other painful and frightening procedures.
Why Are Animals Still Being Used?
The government has announced plans to phase out experiments on animals and invest in human-relevant research methods. Yet millions of animals continue to be used in UK laboratories.
“Why do this when we know it doesn’t work?” asks Kirsty Gallacher.
“We should be moving away from it immediately,” adds Roxy Shahidi.
Modern non-animal research methods can include human organoids, lab-grown human tissue, and artificial intelligence. These approaches focus directly on human biology instead of attempting to extrapolate results from other species.
“The process needs to be sped up,” says Kate Lawler. “We’re dragging our heels.”
The UK Must Turn Its Promises Into Action
The video follows PETA’s delivery of an open letter to Downing Street, signed by more than 30,000 people calling on the prime minister to end experiments on animals.
Animals in laboratories feel pain, fear, and distress, just as the animals who share our homes do. There is no justification for continuing to poison, restrain, and subject them to invasive procedures while advanced, human-relevant research methods are available.
PETA’s Research Modernisation Deal provides a roadmap for replacing experiments on animals. It calls for funding to be redirected towards non-animal research, a review of areas in which experiments on animals have failed to advance human health, and improved training in non-animal methods for scientists and regulators.
Help End Experiments on Animals
Animals should not have to wait for the government to act. Ministers must accelerate the transition to superior, human-relevant science and ensure that animals are no longer subjected to painful and deadly experiments.
Urge the government to replace experiments on animals with modern, non-animal methods.
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