No Dog Experiments in My Name – Patient Calls on MD UK to Stop Funding Cruel Experiments
Johnathon Byrne used to raise funds for Muscular Dystrophy (MD) UK and is an adviser to the charity. But this week, the university student – who has the disease – is taking MD UK to task for funding canine MD experimenters and is urging the charity to support cutting-edge, human-relevant research methods instead.
In a letter to MD UK, Johnathon shares a disturbing video shot inside laboratories in Texas and France that shows golden retrievers who were deliberately bred to have a canine form of MD. He points out that decades of experiments on dogs have failed to produce a viable treatment to reverse the disease’s symptoms in humans.
The video footage, which was given to PETA US and PETA France and shows dogs struggling to walk and swallow, was taken inside the laboratories of Texas A&M University‘s golden retriever muscular dystrophy colony and France’s Alfort National Veterinary School. MD UK funds similar experiments on dogs suffering from MD. A recent paper co-authored by an experimenter supported by the charity describes cruel experiments, in which he participated, involving numerous invasive and painful blood and tissue tests on a sick Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Buckley, who eventually died in the laboratory at Texas A&M University.
Innovative techniques such as using unneeded cells from MD patients to develop disease-specific cures, developing ways to grow healthy human muscle cells that could be transplanted into patients with MD, and creating human-relevant drug-screening platforms have greater potential to lead to promising therapies than using animals does.
You Can Help Stop This!
The canine MD experiments taking place at Alfort are funded by the French charity AFM-Téléthon. Please sign our petition urging it to stop funding these cruel experiments on dogs and to support only modern, non-animal studies.
And please also send a tweet to MD UK asking the charity to end the suffering of dogs and invest in human-relevant research methods that will actually help people like Johnathon.
