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Dear PCRM supporter,
It has just come to our attention that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in conjunction with an animal research industry trade group, is providing false and misleading information about animal experiments to children.
Alarmingly, the NIH promotes, on its Web site, a children’s coloring book that gives a skewed view of animal experiments. The coloring book implies that researchers are trying to cure animals that are already sick—rather than purposely infecting them with diseases—and ignores the fact that animals suffer and die in the process. The coloring book, entitled The Lucky Puppy, was produced by an industry trade group, the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research, whose members have a financial interest in the continuation of animal research.
The coloring book is available through the following link: http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/images/coloring/luckycolor.pdf.
The book erroneously portrays the lives of animals in laboratories as pleasant and carefree. Published scientific research and numerous undercover investigations clearly demonstrate that animals in laboratories suffer pain and distress from experimental procedures and routine laboratory practices. The coloring book also makes misleading claims about the benefits of animal experiments, implying that research findings from experiments on animals are directly applicable to both the animals used in research and to humans.
Please call or e-mail Christine Bruske Flowers, director of the office of communications and public liaison for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, to politely ask her to remove the link to the coloring book from the Web site. Send an automatic e-mail now.
Christine Bruske Flowers
Director of the Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
E-mail: bruskec@niehs.nih.gov
Phone: 919-541-3665
Then forward this message to other compassionate people you know. Thank you for taking action.
Sincerely,
Hope Ferdowsian. M.D.
Director of Research Policy | 
