'The Suffering Is Real'
Behind the Locked Doors of U.S. and French Dog Laboratories
Video footage obtained by PETA reveals that behind closed doors at Texas A&M University (TAMU), dogs deliberately bred to develop crippling muscle diseases struggled to walk and swallow. Experimenters at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Missouri also engage in this shameful practice in which colonies of dogs are bred to suffer from progressive muscular degeneration. Video footage given to PETA France by the group Animal Testing shows that the same misery is being endured by dogs at France’s Alfort National Veterinary School.*****
Update: September 13, 2019
Following intense pressure from PETA, 500 physicians, many scientists, a number of celebrities, muscular dystrophy (MD) patients>, and hundreds of thousands of activists, the canine MD laboratory at TAMU has stopped breeding dogs to develop the crippling disease.
The university has also been caught blatantly lying about the breeding. TAMU issued statements insisting that the dogs were “already affected [by canine MD],” despite indisputable evidence to the contrary in publications authored by the laboratory’s former lead experimenter as well as documents from the university itself. Records show that as many as 100 puppies have been born into imprisonment in the laboratory since PETA launched its campaign in December 2016—all doomed to die shortly after birth or to endure a lifetime with the painful, debilitating symptoms of the illness.
There are still dogs suffering in this notorious laboratory, so we need to keep the pressure on. Please take action below.
Meet Jelly and Peony, two golden retrievers in Texas A&M’s muscular dystrophy lab.
Proof That Texas A&M Breeds Dogs to Have Muscular Dystrophy
MD Patients Speak Out Against Experiments on Dogs
Meet Danica, a dog in Texas A&M’s muscular dystrophy lab who was too weak to stand.
MEET BUCKLEY, A LITTLE DOG WHO DIED IN TEXAS A&M’S MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY LAB.
Misery in Texas
At Texas A&M University, experimenters, led by Joe Kornegay, breed dogs to develop different types of muscular dystrophy (MD), including Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), which is particularly severe. These diseases ravage their bodies, causing progressive muscle wasting and weakness. Studies with these dogs haven’t led to a cure or even a treatment to reverse disease symptoms.Video footage shows that Kornegay’s appallingly thin dogs were caged, sometimes alone, in barren metal cells and struggled to swallow thin gruel—the only food that they could eat, given how easily they could choke. Long ropes of saliva hung from the mouths of dogs whose jaw muscles had weakened. Even balancing was difficult. Dogs with this condition are also at great risk for pneumonia because they can easily inhale liquid into their lungs.
Dogs who didn’t have the disease but carried the DMD gene were used for breeding. Deprived of loving homes, they frantically paced the slatted floors and bit the bars of small cages in frustration. They didn’t even have the comfort of a blanket.
To gauge just how much a dog’s muscles have deteriorated, Kornegay has invented a crude technique that could pass for medieval torture: He repeatedly stretches them with a motorized lever in order to cause muscle tears.
Kornegay has been at this for more than 35 years. (Experts refute his claims about his work and what the dogs in his experiments endure.) Puppies in his laboratory who are born with DMD are so weak at birth that they require extra nutrition. By 6 weeks of age, their hind limbs have shifted forward, making walking difficult, and some are unable to open their mouths or jaws. (Read all the expert statements on the ethics and scientific validity of Kornegay’s work.)
Breeding Pain and Misery in a French Laboratory
The dogs are genetically prone to different types of muscular dystrophy (MD), including Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), which is particularly severe. (FAQ on MD experiments using dogs) These diseases ravage their bodies and are characterized by progressive muscle wasting and weakness. Most dogs never reach adulthood. Some are completely crippled before they even reach 6 months old, and half endure agonizing deaths before the age of 10 months.The heartbreaking video footage shot inside a laboratory in Alfort shows dogs having difficulty swallowing, breathing, and walking as their muscles continue to waste away.
Some dogs eventually lose their ability to eat and must then be fed through a stomach tube. Surviving dogs will develop heart problems as the disease attacks and weakens the cardiac muscle.
A laboratory employee admitted that these dogs suffer. He said,
“I wouldn’t like to be in the beagle’s place. The suffering is real.”
Bad Science
What have these painful experiments accomplished?After decades of testing on generations of debilitated and suffering dogs, there is still no cure or treatment to reverse the course of this terrible disease in humans. So children afflicted with DMD continue to suffer. Analysis of muscular dystrophy studies using dogs has shown that there are serious pitfalls when trying to apply those results to humans. In fact, there are even studies that have produced the opposite results in humans. There are better ways to help patients with MD.
Cutting-edge techniques, some employing the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR, will lead to the development of more promising therapies. Forward-thinking scientists are using cells from DMD patients to develop disease-specific cures, developing ways to grow healthy human muscle cells that could be transplanted into patients with MD, creating human-relevant drug-screening platforms, and using other human-based analyses and computational methods.
This 6-year-old golden retriever, known as Jelly, shown here in an article about Kornegay’s experiments, suffered damaged ligaments and weakened muscles after DEVELOPING MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY. KORNEGAY USED THIS AND OTHER DOGS TO SEARCH FOR PHARMACOLOGIC THERAPIES FOR THE DISEASE – an effort that has failed so far.
Téléthon: Helping or Hurting?
The experiments at Alfort National Veterinary School are funded by the French charity AFM-Téléthon. However, a laboratory official admits that the laboratory could lose that funding if the public were to see the condition of the dogs.“There’s no question that if we showed them our myopathic dogs, they would risk losing a lot of money.”
As well they should.
You Can Help Stop This!
Please urge Texas A&M University to close its dog laboratory, release all dogs for adoption into good homes, and redirect its resources into humane research methods. And please also ask the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to stop funding these cruel experiments on dogs and to support only modern, non-animal studies.Please send polite comments to:
M. Katherine Banks, Ph.D.
President
Texas A&M University
[email protected]