In San Antonio, Texas, Beatles’ iconic singer Sir Paul McCartney has called on Texas A&M University to stop testing on golden retrievers. The dogs have been used in experiments for muscular dystrophy.
According to a news release by PETA, McCartney has written a letter to the university’s president Michael K. Young urging the school to end the experiments where the golden retrievers are bred to have a crippling form of the disease which leaves them struggling to walk, swallow and breathe. Disturbing video, taken inside of the laboratory , have been led by Joe Kornegay. The experiments have not yielded any treatments that have reversed the symptoms of the disease.
“Video footage shows that the appallingly thin dogs in Kornegay’s laboratory 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 those whose jaw muscles had weakened. Even balancing was difficult. Dogs with this condition are also at great risk for contracting pneumonia because they can easily inhale liquid into their lungs.
Dogs who didn’t have the disease but carried the MD gene were used for breeding. Deprived of loving homes, they frantically paced across the slatted floors and bit the bars of the 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. Puppies in his laboratory who are born with MD 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.”
Video: WARNING -This contains disturbing photos of dogs used in experiments. The contents may not be suitable for all viewing audiences.
The above video was first released in March 2017 where disturbing photos of dogs are seen with saliva drooling out of their mouths and eating soft food in bare cages.
In a response to the video, the University’s Research Compliance & Bio-safety stated the dogs in the video have a genetic condition that also affects humans. According to the school, the dogs are treated with care and respect.
McCartney says the video footage is heartbreaking; he recounted a story about his childhood dog who lived and loved him for 15 years.
“Please do the right thing by ending the suffering of dogs in TAMU’s muscular dystrophy laboratory and switching to modern research methods instead,” McCartney concluded in his letter.
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Temper tantrum!
A Beatle that’s an ANGEL! How can we support Paul to the max!
Thank you, Sir Paul, for speaking out against this madness. There is no excuse for breeding dogs to suffer from this horrific disease, especially since the results from these cruel experiments haven’t led to any effective treatments for the disease in humans in the last three decades. TAMU should put its resources into human-relevant research that offers real hope of a cure.