Help stop crude and cruel tests on animals and have your support DOUBLED!

Dear clint,

Buckley, a chestnut-and-white spaniel, seemed smaller and less boisterous than his littermates – and by the time he was just a few months old, he began showing signs of illness. He struggled to chew and swallow his food, was racked by frequent coughing, and often collapsed in a heap after simply playing as any healthy puppy would. At about 6 months old, he was diagnosed with canine muscular dystrophy (MD), a painful and debilitating disease.

Rather than making him as comfortable as possible, his owner “donated” him to experimenters.

For the next five years, Buckley was shuffled between universities like a piece of laboratory equipment and used over and over again in painful tests.

Right now, animals like him are trembling in barren cages, suffering at the hands of experimenters here in the UK and around the world. Please donate to PETA’s Animal Test Challenge to help end such cruelty.

Buckley’s story ends at Texas A&M University’s (TAMU) notorious dog laboratory in the United States. He was plagued by a thick nasal discharge, congestion in his lungs, a heart murmur, and upper respiratory infections when he died as a result of complications from anaesthesia. Experimenters then dissected his corpse and harvested his tissues for examination.

No animal should be made to endure the misery Buckley did. Yet experimenters at TAMU and France’s Alfort National Veterinary School are deliberately breeding dogs like him to suffer from canine MD. The desperately ill animals are used in tests that could pass for medieval torture – including stretching their muscles with a motorised lever to gauge how much they’ve deteriorated. When the dogs are not being tormented by experimenters, they struggle to walk, swallow, and even breathe – much like Buckley did – as disease ravages their bodies.

This year, countless dogs, mice, primates, and other animals will suffer in crude and cruel tests. But you can help them by donating to PETA’s Animal Test Challenge. All gifts made to this challenge by 31 October, up to our £250,000 goal, will be matched to support our work against animal experimentation. Will you make a gift right now to help prevent animals from suffering in laboratories?

Decades of torturing dogs in hideous experiments at TAMU and other facilities have yet to lead to a cure for MD – or even a single treatment to reverse the disease’s devastating symptoms in humans. While scientists know there are better ways to help those who suffer with MD – such as using cells to create disease-specific cures, transplanting healthy muscle cells into human MD patients, and establishing human-relevant drug-screening platforms – the cruel and pointless experiments have yet to end.

With your help, we’re working determinedly to change that. We’re inspiring thousands of caring people to join PETA and our European affiliates in urging French charity AFM-Téléthon to cut its funding for dog experiments at Alfort National Veterinary School, and the pressure on TAMU to shut down its dog laboratory is growing by the day. PETA and our international affiliates are also helping to eliminate the use of animals in all kinds of experiments by funding the development and promoting the use of non-animal research methods.

You can give a vital boost to our work to spare animals torment in laboratories by donating to PETA’s Animal Test Challenge. Please don’t miss this special opportunity to have your gift for animals doubled!

Thank you for your compassion and generosity.

Kind regards,

Ingrid E Newkirk
Founder