The Department of Veterans Affairs has had trouble providing evidence that its painful dog experiments–including “maximum pain” heart attack tests on puppies–are helping veterans.
Apparently, that’s because they’re not.
In a new article published in The Hill, Benjamin Krause–a disabled U.S. Air Force veteran, journalist, attorney, and founder of DisabledVeterans.org–does a deep dive into the VA’s dubious claims that it’s painful dog experiments are somehow helping veterans.
As Krause explains, the law mandates that VA research focus on veteran-specific health issues, but he could find little evidence that’s whats happening:
Despite my repeated requests to VA press secretary Curt Cashour, the VA has yet to name a single veteran-focused medical advancement that has ever resulted from dog testing in nearly 100 years of VA research.
The article also explains that important veterans’ health research areas are being neglected, that VA is on record saying that animal experimentation isn’t valid and that VA is claiming credit for industry-led medical innovations it wasn’t involved in.
Krause concludes:
Let’s stop pretending this dog research is being done to specifically help disabled veterans. Congress must audit VA canine research to evaluate whether the agency has any business spending taxpayer dollars this way.