PETA Destroys Texas A&M’s ‘Fact Sheet’ re Its Inhumane Dog Laboratory

Texas A&M University experimenters, currently led by Peter P. Nghiem, have been experimenting on golden retrievers deliberately bred to develop canine muscular dystrophy (MD). This disease ravages the animals’ bodies, causing progressive muscle wasting and weakness. PETA is calling for these experiments to end, and it came to our attention that the school produced a propaganda sheet that it apparently shared—in a weak attempt to justify its torment of gentle animals—with legislators who question its canine MD laboratory.

Video footage shows appallingly thin dogs caged in barren metal cells and struggling to swallow thin gruel—the only food that they could eat, given how easily they could choke. Healthy dogs who were used for breeding (Texas A&M stopped breeding the dogs in 2019, in response to our campaign) frantically paced across the slatted floors and bit the bars of the small cages in frustration. To gauge the sick dogs’ muscle deterioration, experimenters repeatedly stretch their legs with a motorized lever in order to cause muscle tears.

Texas A&M is trying to defend this obscenely disturbing treatment of animals by claiming that it’s necessary for medical advancement and that the dogs are treated like “pets.” Video evidence and experts refute the validity of these claims. Here, we go through Texas A&M’s propaganda point by point, obliterating its credibility and exposing its lies:

Texas A&M’s Claim

Like all animals used in research at Texas A&M University, the dogs involved in the Duchenne muscular dystrophy [DMD] research here receive exceptional care and are loved daily by the technicians, staff and veterinarians who are helping to unravel the mysteries and find potential cures for this deadly disease. We so appreciate these hard-working partners who continue to contribute to our understanding of diseases, as well as help us work toward preventing, fighting and curing diseases.

Strict oversight continues over the DMD research, which is shared globally with the goal of finding a cure for DMD for both the children (mostly boys) and dogs suffering from the deadly disease. The dogs at the state-of-the-art facility—which has never received a citation from the FDA, the USDA or any other agency charged with oversight—are treated much like pets in our homes: They are given regular playtime, have spacious areas to run around outside, are fed quality food, receive regular care from certified vets and are truly loved by their caregivers; their large “condo” crates are spacious enough to have a roommate for the more social dogs.

PETA’s Response

The dogs at Texas A&M spend nearly 24 hours a day locked in cold, metal-floored kennels. Records from the laboratory obtained by PETA show that they’re allowed out for approximately 30 minutes of exercise every 10 days. This isn’t how you’d treat someone you loved, whether human or another animal.

As a result of the debilitating nature of canine MD—which experimenters deliberately bred the dogs to have—many of them suffer from poor appetite or struggle to eat the food that they’re given. According to former Texas A&M professor Joe Kornegay, who created the canine MD breeding line, oversaw the lab, and started the MD experiments at Texas A&M, these vulnerable dogs experience stunted growth, have difficulty suckling and are unable to open their mouths fully because of spasms of the jaw muscles, and have a stiff gait, an abnormal stance from muscle weakness, contracted muscles that cause the spine to curve inward, enlarged muscles in the tongue and diaphragm, and difficulty breathing and swallowing.

In 2012, Peony, a golden retriever who was bred to have canine MD, was transferred to Texas A&M. Her daily care records (which PETA obtained through a public records request) along with eyewitness testimony show that her enlarged tongue made her salivate uncontrollably and that she struggled to swallow, breathe, and eat. She regularly had excessive saliva hanging in long strings of 8 inches or more from her mouth. The drool soaked the fur on her chest and caused a moist skin infection and hair loss. By the time she was 21 months old, she was emaciated, weighing just under 30 pounds. The average weight for healthy female golden retrievers this age is 55 to 70 pounds. While at Texas A&M, Peony, who had little fat to regulate her body temperature, was hosed down with cold water because employees claimed that there was no way to adjust the water temperature. In November 2012, Peony was found lying on her side and unable to get up. She was crying out and salivating more than usual. The lead experimenter suggested that she could be experiencing heart problems associated with the disease. Peony was euthanized on March 3, 2013, two months shy of her second birthday.

Records for another MD-afflicted dog, Lunes, contain more than 130 notations in 2018 alone specifying that he left part or all of his food uneaten. There’s no indication that he was given veterinary care to address his apparently declining condition. He was found dead in his kennel on June 24, 2019.

Texas A&M’s Claim

Following the law: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires therapies be proven successful and safe in an animal before being tested in humans.

PETA’s Response

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require that Texas A&M confine dogs to barren metal cages for their entire lives or subject them to painful procedures that fail to produce any valuable information about human MD. Nor does it require experimenters to give healthy dogs to other divisions at Texas A&M, as has been done: Eight healthy dogs from the canine MD laboratory were transferred to the veterinary school rather than being released for adoption. Most of the federal funding for Texas A&M’s canine MD laboratory appears to have expired, and any experiments that the university could even pretend are contributing to a cure for MD have largely ended. No law prevents the university from releasing the dogs it is currently warehousing for adoption.

Furthermore, the FDA’s requirement that drugs be tested in nonhuman animals is archaic, and considering that 95% of drugs that pass animal tests are shown to fail or be harmful in human trials, this rule is soon to be a thing of the past.

Texas A&M’s Claim

Human trials underway thanks to DMD research at TAMU: A&M’s DMD research has contributed to preclinical data that led to the FDA approval of recent experimental therapy in human patients. There are currently two human clinical trials underway involving this research. The gene therapy aims to deliver a healthy and synthetic version of dystrophin—a protein that DMD patients lack that’s required for muscle movement—to cells to overcome the protein deficiency.

PETA’s Response

After decades of MD experiments on dogs, there’s still no cure or treatment that reverses the symptoms of the disease. What Texas A&M has conveniently omitted is that at least one of the ongoing clinical trials, which is testing an unproven treatment that was only partially developed using dogs at the Texas A&M laboratory (SGT-001), has twice been put on hold by the FDA because of the drug’s severe side effects. The DMD drugs that have recently been granted accelerated approval by the FDA still require completion of phase 3 clinical trials to confirm whether they’re of substantial benefit to DMD patients. There’s no published evidence that Texas A&M contributed to the development of these drugs.

Texas A&M’s Claim

Role of dogs in drug development process is indispensable: Most of the top 25 drugs prescribed in the U.S. were developed with the help of studies in dogs, along with other lab animal models and, ultimately, humans, according to the National Association for Biomedical Research, citing publicly available data compiled from the FDA.

The National Institutes for Health documents how research in dogs has helped develop treatments for some cancers, diabetes, respiratory diseases, heart disease, spinal cord diseases, kidney problems, liver disease and many other medical issues. Heart and lung transplants and insulin came about because of research in canines.

PETA’s Response

This has nothing to do with Texas A&M’s refusal to release the dogs in the canine MD laboratory. And while experiments on dogs have been conducted during the course of developing certain drugs and treatments, this doesn’t mean that dogs were vital to developing these treatments or that the same treatments couldn’t have been developed without using them. Indeed, recent studies show that 90% of basic research, most of which involves animals, doesn’t lead to therapies for humans. Correlation is not causation. Human health is more likely to be advanced by devoting resources to the development of non-animal test methods, which have the potential to be cheaper, faster, and more relevant to humans, instead of chasing leads in often inaccurate tests on animals. As the U.S. National Institutes of Health has reported, 95% of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don’t work or are dangerous.

Texas A&M’s Claim

Alternate methods of study at Texas A&M: While no complete alternatives to animal research exist now, Texas A&M uses computer models, epidemiological studies, cell cultures and other methods. None of those can give researchers the vital information required before it is tried in humans. Texas A&M researchers are committed to finding alternatives so that less animals are used in studies. Mice and dogs are used with the DMD research.

PETA’s Response

PETA commends Texas A&M for its use of effective, animal-free methods of research in some cases. Nevertheless, the university could easily release the healthy dogs from its canine MD program for adoption, as a start. They aren’t even being used in experiments.

Texas A&M’s Claim

Why dogs? Dogs and humans have similar physiology and immune response systems, so doing the research in dogs helps predict what will happen in humans in terms of how the disease will develop, and whether a potential therapy will be safe for humans. Whatever helps humans with the disease, will help canines with the disease.

PETA’s Response

While there are some similarities between MD in humans and in dogs, there are also significant differences. For example, 20% to 30% of puppies affected with canine DMD die as a result of diaphragm failure, which doesn’t occur in human infants with DMD. Human patients often experience growth delays and learning disabilities, neither of which has been observed in dogs with canine DMD. Since DMD is a disease of the muscles, it’s also important to recognize that in four-legged animals such as dogs, muscles have different composition, energy use, and functions than they do in two-legged humans. There are also differences in life expectancy. Humans with DMD live approximately one-third of their normal life expectancy, while dogs can live up to half of their normal life expectancy. If Texas A&M truly cared about humans and dogs with MD, it would acknowledge the failings of the canine “model” and invest fully in advanced, animal-free methods of studying the disease.

Texas A&M’s Claim

DMD: The lack of protein in muscle cells causes humans and animals suffering from the disease to become increasingly fragile, easily injured and lose the ability to walk at a young age. Until recently, children with DMD usually did not survive much beyond their teen years. Thanks to outcomes born from research, their life expectancy is increasing and many survive into their early 30s. Roughly 300,000 boys around the world currently are affected by DMD, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

PETA’s Response

It wasn’t research conducted at Texas A&M on dogs that extended the life expectancy of humans with MD. While it’s devastating that human children suffer from this painful and debilitating condition, they’re receiving no benefits from canine experiments at the university. Fortunately, advanced, human-relevant methods are being used in other laboratories to enhance and streamline drug development for DMD. For example, scientists have used sophisticated technology to restore dystrophin function in human cells obtained from actual DMD patients, a discovery that may result in treatment for up to 60% of humans with DMD. Researchers are finding ways to grow functional human muscle tissue so that it might be used to screen potential new drugs. Adult human stem cells can produce muscle precursor cells that are being used to test cell therapy, engraftment, or drug screening. In addition, Harvard University scientists engineered a human DMD “tongue on a chip” that uses muscle stem cells from DMD patients to recreate human muscle tissue on thin, microfluidic devices. Using this model, the scientists were partly able to explain why muscle regeneration fails in these patients and leads to profound muscle weakness.

Texas A&M’s Claim

Highly regulated research: Texas A&M’s DMD research—which is under the comparative medicine program—is regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service; the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International; the Food and Drug Administration; National Institutes of Health and Texas A&M’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

PETA’s Response

One would hope this oversight would be sufficient to ensure that only the most rigorous and ethical studies are undertaken. However, the regulations set forth by these entities dictate only the very minimum in terms of animal welfare and scientific review and aren’t reliably enforced. It’s perfectly legal to keep dogs in metal runs with almost no access to exercise or the outdoors.

Furthermore, a 2014 audit by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that experimental procedures on animals weren’t always adequately monitored and that this deficiency “reduced assurance that protocols are properly completed, approved, and adhered to and that animals are always receiving basic humane care and treatment.” In the audit, the Office of Inspector General describes how Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC), the bodies responsible for ensuring that research facilities comply with the federal Animal Welfare Act, “are not always adequately monitoring experimental procedures on animals” because of insufficient or inadequate training, inconsistent monitoring, and lack of accurate reporting.

Additionally, the oversight bodies charged with reviewing the specific procedures performed on animals are rarely, if ever, tasked with assessing the scientific merit of the experiments in question. In the U.S., experimenters aren’t required by all entities to perform a thorough harm-benefit analysis for experiments conducted on animals, and IACUCs, like the one at Texas A&M, aren’t expected to evaluate experiments with this in mind. This unfortunately results in numerous invasive procedures being conducted on animals without adequate scientific justification.

Texas A&M’s Claim

Response to the same misleading video footage taken secretly six years ago:

A Golden Retriever was shown with food on her face, suggesting she was being fed “gruel.” The dog shown had an enlarged tongue so she had her own special method of eating. Their food is of the highest nutritional value and once she’d finish, caregivers always cleaned her up. We all were so sad to see her exploited in the video because that wasn’t her life: It was a moment in time for a loved and happy dog.
Another dog is shown in footage drooling (and wagging his tail) in footage that was slowed down. What the video never explains is that the dog was coming out of anesthesia after awakening from a cardiac MRI with behavior common for an animal in recovery after a procedure.
A third animal shown was not from TAMU research but presented as such by protesters. We believe that dog was from a lab in France.

PETA’s Response

The video footage we released was recorded entirely at Texas A&M by a concerned insider. A different video posted by PETA includes footage shot by a journalist in a French laboratory, but that footage is clearly marked as being from the French laboratory. In the Texas A&M video, the barren and sterile conditions in which the dogs are held are readily apparent.

Texas A&M’s discussion of the dog shown struggling to eat thin gruel in PETA’s video is particularly misleading. The dog was forced to develop a “special method of eating” only because experimenters deliberately bred her to develop MD. Among the symptoms of canine MD are an enlarged tongue and weakened jaw muscles, leading to difficulty swallowing and an increased risk of choking.

Texas A&M’s comments about the video released by PETA don’t address the meager conditions in which the dogs are held—deprived not only of adequate stimulation, enrichment, and companionship but even of something as simple as a resting board or blanket. (The latter was withheld to avoid issues with drainage.)

Texas A&M’s Claim

Not harmed:

The testing involves a medical instrument, the same of which is used on boys who have DMD, which measures the strength of muscles. The procedure lasts less than 20 minutes, including rest time, and the dog is under anesthesia throughout.
The test, which typically is done two or three times in the dog’s life, has no after-effects.
A second test, called a walk test, involves measuring the dog’s stride as it walks, as well as monitoring cardiac and respiratory health. There are no after-effects.

These dogs are treated like the heroes that they are to curing diseases.

PETA’s Response

The dogs in Texas A&M’s laboratory were purposely bred to develop a debilitating, painful, and ultimately fatal condition. The force measurement procedures (pictured below) and biopsies that they undergo are painful like any surgical procedure, and being put under anesthesia is a frightening and disorienting experience for any dog. Please see the video of the device that’s used for the force measurement procedures here. It’s difficult to imagine that this is done to children.

The dogs are also injected with experimental drugs that may have painful or lethal side effects. When the dogs aren’t being used in procedures, they spend nearly all their time locked in barren kennels. Virtually all the MD-affected dogs who don’t die shortly after birth (many do) will die prematurely of heart or respiratory failure or be euthanized after a lifetime of progressive physical decline starting in puppyhood. Texas A&M can’t go back in time to prevent the suffering that it has already caused, but it can reduce suffering going forward by finally releasing the remaining dogs from its MD laboratory for adoption into loving homes.

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Additional PETA resources:

Texas A&M can try all it wants to justify abusing animals under the guise of medical advancement, but even if these experiments did help humans, it wouldn’t matter. Subjecting animals to cruel experiments is speciesist. Dogs can experience love, fear, pain, loneliness, joy, and frustration. They’re capable of problem-solving, learning, and forming meaningful relationships. They care about their own well-being, as you do about yours. Relegating them to a barren cage—only to be exploited for painful procedures before killing them—is unacceptable.