UPDATE (6/9/17): Following WCW’s campaign, the Los Angeles V.A. has announced it has canceled plans for deadly experiments on Dobermans and will end it’s decades-old dog breeding program.
Original post
Over the past two months, White Coat Waste Project’s national “Prisoners of Waste” campaign has exposed wasteful and cruel taxpayer-funded dog experiments at Veterans Affairs (VA) laboratories in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Richmond. Now, WCW and Congress are taking on the fourth and final VA facility abusing dogs in animal-loving Los Angeles, CA.
As the LA Times, Roll Call, Washington Times, Stars and Stripes, POLITICO and others are reporting, documents recently obtained by WCW through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveal for the first time that the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System (Greater LA VA) is conducting secretive and deadly experiments on dogs.
At the facility, dozens of Dobermans are being bred to suffer from narcolepsy, a sleep disorder involving excessive sleepiness and falling asleep suddenly. The dogs are injected with methamphetamines or antidepressants for as long as six months and then killed so their brains can be cut out and dissected.
This continues to be approved, funded and conducted by the VA even though the experimenters acknowledge in their application for the project that, “the underlying cause for narcolepsy in humans is different from that in dogs.”
We’ve shared the troubling documents with members of Congress, who now want to know why its so hard to find any public information about this taxpayer-funded experiment.
This morning, a strongly-worded investigation request was sent to the VA Inspector General by Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-NV) and LA-area Congress members Ted Lieu—a veteran who represents the Greater LA VA’s congressional district—Nanette Diaz Barragán, Tony Cárdenas, J. Luis Correa, Alan Lowenthal, Grace Napolitano, Brad Sherman and Norma Torres.
Thanks to @WhiteCoatWaste for helping me & my colleagues expose how the LA VA drugged & killed dogs in experiments. https://t.co/EiCXmMiNE9
— Dina Titus (@repdinatitus) May 9, 2017
In their letter to the VA, the nine Congress members write that the Greater LA VA Doberman experiment’s “details are alarming,” and challenge what they characterize as “misleading statements” and a “lack of transparency and accountability.” They go on to write that, “Taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent.”
It’s critical that outraged Americans make their voices heard through legal and peaceful protests only, and the most effective way to do that is contacting Congress.
More than 300,000 people have written to Congress in support of WCW’s campaign to cut taxpayer funding for wasteful and deadly government dog experiments.
