PETA Statement: Panel’s VA Dog Experiments Recommendation

For Immediate Release:
July 1, 2020

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President of International Laboratory Methods Shalin Gala regarding the position by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that some experiments on dogs by the Department of Veterans Affairs are warranted:

Severing dogs’ spinal cords and implanting pacemakers in them does nothing to address military veterans’ real health needs. The Veterans Administration (VA) should address veterans’ needs by using the most advanced technology available, such as synthetically engineered human cardiac tissue and advanced computer models, not shamelessly wasting taxpayer dollars on abusing and killing dogs and other animals in misguided, flawed, and deadly experiments that don’t apply to humans because of significant physiological differences between species. Based on the National Academies’ recommendation that the VA “[d]evelop a strategic road map to incorporate … non-animal approaches, into its biomedical research,” we urge the agency to review PETA’s groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal, which articulates a scientific plan to do just that by advancing human health without harming animals and notes that the recognition of sentience in dogs and other species has played a role in the public’s growing opposition to animal experiments.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.