Anderson Anderson

New Delhi, Feb. 19: A two-year-old video of animals in extreme distress has prompted Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson to write to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences complaining about its treatment of laboratory animals.

The three-minute long video claimed to have been secretly filmed by an intern working in AIIMS portrays the plight of monkeys, rabbits, and rats kept at the institute’s central facility for experimental animals.

“It broke my heart to see the suffering documented in the video,” Anderson said in a letter sent yesterday to AIIMS director R.C. Deka. “Just watching the video made me cry, but the animals suffering behind closed doors at AIIMS endure this nightmare every day.”

The video shows monkeys confined in cramped, barren and rusty cages and rabbits in wire-floored cages which, Anderson said, can cause the sharp wires to dig into the sensitive footpads of rabbits and cause their feet to get stuck.

The recording also portrays rabbits suffering from skin disease, rats with open wounds and a laboratory worker taunting a monkey by pretending to kick the monkey’s cage, she wrote.

The Indian branch of the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) had sent Anderson a copy of the video.

“She’s been a long-time supporter of Peta — and was very upset when she saw this video,” said Poorva Joshipura, a Peta official in India.

A senior AIIMS faculty member said the letter provides a misleading impression of the animal house, which currently holds 43 rhesus monkeys, at least 100 rabbits, about 1,200 rats, 600 mice and 60 guinea pigs.

“There is no truth in this letter — in any case, things have changed drastically in the past two years,” said Yogendra Kumar Gupta, head of pharmacology at AIIMS and a member of the animal ethics committee.

“We have changed their cages, there are new exhaust fans, air conditioners, even space to play — and it is absolutely false to claim that our animals do not receive veterinary care,” Gupta told The Telegraph.

But Peta India activists say despite repeated appeals to AIIMS and a central committee responsible for overseeing ethical treatment of laboratory animals, neither has provided proof of any improvement. “AIIMS has locked its doors and refuses to allow visitors into its animal facility,” said Joshipura.

A senior AIIMS faculty who requested anonymity said: “In some ways, our animals have better living conditions than even some of our patients.”

Rules governing experimental animals in India require laboratories to rehabilitate animals after three years in the laboratory, daily inspection for illness or injury, a clean habitat and enough room to move about freely.