The Science I Was Trained to Defend—and Why I Don’t Anymore
- Emily R. Trunnell, PhD [Guest Blog]
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
During my first year in the neuroscience Ph.D. Program, I sat down with my major professor to decide what kind of experiments I would do—essentially to plan out the next four years of my life. Our lab did both rat and cell culture work, and my professor told me: “You’re going to want to do animal work because that’s what journals want to publish. You’ll have much less luck publishing papers if they’re only in vitro.”
During my first couple of years, I loved being in the lab with the animals. I’d never been around rats before and quickly learned how sweet, smart, and funny they are— each with a distinct personality. Some would nuzzle contentedly in the crook of my arm, others were master explorers inspecting me head to toe, and a few would fight to keep me from lifting them from their cages.
Our neuroscience graduate school cohort was split between those working with human patients using brain imaging and those conducting animal experimentation. Sometimes, speaking with my imaging colleagues and listening to them say they could never work “with” animals, I felt like I was somehow tougher than them—like I had it in me to put feelings aside and do what “needed” to be done.
But then one day, we went into the rat room to discover that, an unknown number of days previously, someone had put one of the rat cages in backward. The entry for the waterspout was on the wrong side. When we checked the rat inside, she was completely emaciated and barely moving. After she was euthanized, I couldn’t stop thinking about how long she must have been in there without any access to water and how terrifying and confusing that must have been.
The study I was working on at the time used aged female rats (retired breeders) and aimed to understand the role of specific phytochemicals in protecting against post-menopausal bone loss in women. A visiting veterinarian offered to come in to observe our ovariectomy procedure and offer tips on how we could improve the technique. At the time, each rat’s ovariectomy took well over an hour. I could tell that what the vet saw horrified him. He was able to show us a much simpler method that took about a quarter of the time and used a significantly smaller incision, which sped recovery and reduced post-operative pain. I could not count how many rats we’d put through those extensive surgeries, their bellies sliced almost entirely open. This was the first time that I started to question whether those in charge really knew as much as I’d given them credit for.
As I progressed toward graduation, I felt increasingly drained and agitated, particularly at the end of a “sac day,” when I’d finished a set of experiments and had to kill the rats to harvest their brain and other tissues.
At the time, I only connected these negative feelings with having spent a long day on my feet. As I made my way from campus to the nearest bar, I didn’t ask myself what it was I was trying to numb.
My final experiment was purportedly to learn what would happen to learning and memory if we interrupted a specific epigenetic process. We had to get special permission from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to inject the rats with a substance that had never been given to an animal before. My advisor was the IACUC chair and—well—it wasn’t hard to get permission. Two different substances we injected caused pain and nausea.
This was the first time I’d intentionally inflicted pain on animals. Seeing their misery throughout the experiment, my hands shook every time I had to do an injection. I felt panicked when I was in the lab and struggled with persistent anxiety. This was when I decided that once I graduated, I’d never do animal experimentation again.
After defending and submitting my dissertation, I began searching for jobs outside the laboratory. I’d always enjoyed the writing aspect of science and applied for two positions in science writing and editing, one at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). I came across the PETA job posting completely by chance and was immediately intrigued. Someone in HR noticed that my CV listed a Ph.D. in neuroscience and forwarded it to PETA’s Laboratory Investigations Department.
On a call, a PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo asked me if, instead of writing, I would like to use my background to help end animal experimentation. I had already been offered the position at the other company I’d applied for, and this would be… big; a total 180. While I knew that doing experiments on animals wasn’t for me, I wasn’t sure if I thought it should be abolished entirely. I told her I’d need a few days to think about it.
I started looking into whether what I’d been told my entire graduate career—that animal research was critical for medical advances—was really the truth.
Readers: It wasn’t.
I read up on the reproducibility crisis in biomedical research, species differences that are overlooked and lead to misleading and dangerous findings, aspects of laboratory research that confound data, and gaps in oversight.
I reflected on how easily I obtained IACUC approval for experiments that primarily served to fulfill my degree requirements and had no potential to advance science or improve human health.
On an evening walk with our dog, Ella, I peppered my husband with all these worries. Taking a job at PETA might be cool, but how long would I stay there? And would having animal rights on my resume make me a pariah, blocked from future opportunities in science? After listening for a while, he asked one question that immediately vaporized my indecision: “What do you think is right from the perspective of the animals?”
On September 26, 2025, I celebrated my ninth anniversary at PETA. Along with two of my PETA colleagues, I shared my story with the world in the 2019 short documentary Test Subjects. I’ve had the privilege of working with a team to create a global tidal wave against the forced swim test, stop dogs from being bred to have crippling muscular dystrophy, challenge the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) funding of sepsis experiments on animals in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, and much, much more.
I’ve learned that there’s a whole community of scientists challenging the status quo of animal experimentation and that there’s a name for what my major professor told me all those years ago about journals preferring animal experiments: animal methods bias.
I helped found the coalition that named and is working to mitigate that bias.
For almost two years, I’ve been the director of PETA’s Science Advancement and Outreach division, directing U.S. science policy, scientific publishing, and graduate education away from the use of animals and toward innovative, human-relevant research.
This year, I’ve finally felt like the tide is turning. In April, NIH, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research and the primary focus of my work, announced that it would prioritize human-based research over experiments on animals. The movement for compassionate science is flourishing, and our momentum feels almost surreal.
I’m so grateful for the opportunity to channel my experiences into advocating for science that spares animals and has real potential to help humans. I’m grateful that I can use my past to create a future where students no longer need to put their compassion aside to be good scientists.