Imagine being dropped into a container of water with no way out. You swim as hard as you can, desperate to stay alive. When you finally stop struggling — exhausted, terrified — a scientist marks it down as "depression."

That is the forced swim test.

It is happening right now in laboratories around the world. Mice, rats, and hamsters are dosed with experimental drugs, dropped into inescapable tanks of water, and forced to swim until they give up.

Experimenters claim it measures depression in animals. But science disagrees: research shows the test is less reliable than a coin toss for predicting whether antidepressants will work in humans. It is both cruel and useless.

The good news: the world is waking up. Ireland banned the forced swim test in 2026. Germany, the UK, Australia, and countries across Latin America have moved to end it. Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and more than 40 other major pharmaceutical companies have dropped it entirely after pressure from scientists and supporters like you. More than 40 universities have followed.

But too many institutions are still clinging to this discredited experiment. Animals are still drowning in laboratories that could choose to stop today.

Sign this petition to demand that pharmaceutical companies and universities worldwide ban the forced swim test — because no animal should be terrified into exhaustion for science that doesn't work.