PETA Ad and Fliers Will Expose Cruel MD Tests
For Immediate Release:
January 17, 2019
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
College Station, Texas – Starting today, people strolling the Texas A&M University (TAMU) campus and the surrounding neighborhoods of Bryan and College Station will see a plea for help: fliers showing a golden retriever’s sweet face alongside the words “Please Help! Lost Dog.” A related ad showing “found” dogs appears in the student newspaper, The Battalion, calling on readers to urge TAMU President Michael Young to end the university’s muscular dystrophy (MD) experiments on dogs. The ad mentions that dogs have been “bred to suffer” and are “destined to die.”
PETA and a “dog” also protested at the university’s Board of Regents meeting today at H.D. Smith Operations Complex.
“Too many dogs have been lost to Texas A&M’s pointless, fatal experiments,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on the school to redirect resources into humane research methods that don’t leave a graveyard of dead dogs and sunken hopes in their wake.”
Video footage obtained by PETA shows dogs suffering from MD who were caged, sometimes alone, in barren metal cells in TAMU’s labs. Their swollen tongues and weakened jaw muscles made it difficult for them to swallow even thin gruel, and strings of drool hung from their mouths. Those who didn’t exhibit symptoms but who carried the gene for MD were used for breeding more dogs to experiment on. The video shows these dogs frantically pacing and gnawing in frustration on the bars of cramped, barren cages.
PETA’s efforts to end these tests have received support from patients afflicted with MD, scientists—who’ve criticized the experiments’ inapplicability to human patients—and public figures, including actor Lily Tomlin, Miami Dolphins quarterback and TAMU alumnus Ryan Tannehill, and commentator Bill Maher, who called the university “dogs’ worst enemy.”
Previous PETA protests at TAMU can be viewed here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
