Animal Writings

"For more than a quarter of a century this scientist at the University of Chicago deprived animals of sleep. He started out keeping rats awake for up to 24 hours and then letting them recover.

He moved on to total sleep deprivation: he kept rats awake until their bodies could no longer cope and they died of exhaustion. This took anywhere from 11 to 32 days. To prepare the helpless animals for this long nightmarish journey to death, the vivisector stuck electrodes in their skulls, sewed wires to their hearts, and surgically buried thermometers in their stomachs, so that he could track their temperatures and brain waves. To make blood drawing easier (for him), he snaked catheters through their jugular veins, down their necks, and into their hearts.

Once the rats were wired up like circuit boards, he placed them on disks suspended above the water. When the rats started to enter the forbidden sleep state, the disks automatically rotated. If the rats didn't get up and walk back and forth across the tilting disk that was their "home," they were dumped into the water. Eventually, after their fur turned oily and yellowish brown and fell out in clumps, they developed ulcers on their feet and tails, their body fat dissolved, and the rats died.

So what did the scientist hope to discover? In his own words, 'We established that rats die after 17 days of total sleep deprivation. Thus, at least for the rat, sleep is essential.'"

— From PETA, as reported in Animals: Why They Must Not Be Brutalized, J.B. Suconik, 2000