Video: Protester Interrupts Texas A&M Chancellor at SXSW Panel

PETA Ups the Pressure on University to End Cruel Canine Muscular Dystrophy Experiments

For Immediate Release:
March 11, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Earlier today—as part of PETA’s longstanding campaign to urge Texas A&M University (TAMU) to end its muscular dystrophy (MD) experiments on dogs and commit to using cutting-edge, animal-free research methods—a PETA supporter hopped up onto the stage during a South by Southwest panel featuring TAMU Chancellor John Sharp with strong words and a sign proclaiming, “Shut the Dog Lab Down!” As the protester was carried away from the event by her arms and legs, she continued to speak out for the dogs killed at the university. Video footage is available here.

“As Chancellor Sharp toots TAMU’s horn at festival panels, scared dogs are suffering in laboratories and are being used as living test tubes in misguided experiments at his university,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA will continue to protest the university until it stops tormenting and killing sensitive dogs in these despicable, pointless experiments.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a supremacist worldview. Eyewitness video footage obtained by PETA shows thin dogs suffering from canine MD caged, sometimes alone, in barren metal cells in TAMU’s laboratory. Their swollen tongues and weakened jaw muscles made it difficult for them to swallow even thin gruel, and strings of saliva hung from their mouths. Dogs who had no symptoms but who carried the gene for the disease were kept caged and used for breeding. The video shows them frantically pacing on the hard slatted floors and biting at the bars of small cages in frustration. Thirty-seven years of these tests have failed to produce a cure or even a treatment to reverse the course of muscular dystrophy in humans.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.