UW-Madison announced the closure of its controversial cat laboratory Friday, citing the retirement of neuroscience professor Tom Yin, 70, as the reason.
Yin ran experiments studying cats’ hearing abilities for more than a decade, which included deafening the cats and installing cochlear implants in their ears to test their abilities to localize sound. This drew criticism from animal rights activists.
Yin and his faculty hired a professional from the Bionics Institute in Australia to teach them how to surgically install cochlear implants in the cats’ ears.
“We essentially got the foremost authority in the world on cat cochlear implants to help us,” Yin said.
He added that the lab photographed the process to learn the correct way to do it.
The experiments drew allegations of mistreatment of cats, leading to several protests and outcries from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Animal rights activists at PETA now believe their protests against Yin’s work played a substantial role in the closure of the lab, PETA’s director of lab investigations, Justin Goodman, said.
In 2013, PETA protested against Yin’s experiments, including running advertisements on Madison Metro buses depicting photos of the cats during the cochlear implant surgeries.
Goodman said he believes the lab closed for several reasons, including Yin’s retirement, but that public pressure from PETA’s protests contributed to the lab’s closure.
Yin said he decided to retire more than a year ago when his National Institutes of Health research grant was up for renewal. He refuted claims that PETA’s actions played a role in the closure of the lab, calling them “absolutely false.”
“If anything, I wanted to keep the lab open just so PETA wouldn’t say that,” Yin said. He added PETA has no evidence that they closed his lab.
Yin recognizes PETA’s standpoint as a “viable stance,” but says his work’s impact on a small number of animals is worth advancing general understanding and stimulating medical innovation.
“We think this information about how the brain works is important to possible future improvements in the human condition,” Yin said.
