PETA Demands U.S. Army Ban ‘Classified’ Weapon-Wounding Tests on Dogs, Others

ANIMAL RIGHTS - VEGETARIANISM, 3 Jul 2023

Elena Waldman | PETA – TRANSCEND Media Service

Weapon-Wounding Tests on Dogs
SAGE Journals

In a shocking twist, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC)—in its “Policy 84”—is now explicitly permitting formerly banned laboratory experiments involving the wounding of dogs, cats, marine animals, and primates using weapons. And to add insult to injury (of our fellow animals), the military branch is refusing to disclose details of these secretive taxpayer-funded tests to PETA.

In March 2022, PETA filed a Freedom of Information Act request for photos, videos, and other documentation of tests approved by the USAMRDC “that involve the use of a weapon … to inflict wounds” on animals. Even though the command initially stated that it had at least 2,000 responsive records, it later backtracked, claiming to have only one—which the Army conveniently claims is “classified … in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

PETA Demands Answers on Behalf of Our Fellow Animals and the Public

Taxpayers deserve to know if their money is going toward torturing dogs, cats, marine animals, and primates in pointless and cruel weapon-wounding experiments. That’s why PETA filed an appeal with the Army, calling for the release of public information on weapons testing in which wounds are inflicted on such animals. We also sent a letter to Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth urging her to reinstate the previous ban on such tests.

The Army Needs to Restore the Ban on Weapon-Wounding Tests on Animals

In 1983, PETA exposed and successfully campaigned to shut down a U.S. Department of Defense “wound lab” in which dogs, goats, and other animals were shot with high-powered weapons, resulting in the first-ever permanent ban on the shooting of dogs and cats in wound labs, which was issued by then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

In 2005, the Army issued Regulation 40-33, which banned the use of dogs, cats, marine animals, and primates in “[r]esearch conducted for development of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons.” Yet in 2020, the Army apparently reversed its position by permitting “[t]he purchase or use of dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, or marine mammals to inflict wounds upon using a weapon for the purpose of conducting medical research, development, testing, or evaluation.”

Importantly, the 59^th Medical Wing (MDW) of the U.S. Air Force recently adopted a policy that states that its own experimentation program “does not conduct Research & Development or training protocols involving non-human primates, dogs, cats, or marine mammals”—which is the opposite of the USAMRDC’s policy, which allows weapon-wounding tests on these animals.

PETA is leading the push for the Army to disclose the details of these horrific experiments and follow the lead of the Air Force’s 59^th MDW and permanently ban crude and irrelevant weapon-wounding experiments on animals.

We’re also disturbed by a reported military plan to expose monkeys to pulsed microwave radiation in a misguided attempt to determine human brain effects associated with Havana syndrome. The causal link between directed energy weapons and Havana syndrome has been debunked by the intelligence community, as has the purported justification for the Army’s current $750,000 taxpayer-funded brain injury experiment that bombards 48 ferrets with radio waves in an attempt to study this illness. The Army should stop letting paranoia and fear influence its research.

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Update: Following our revelation, the USAMRDC issued a statement that it has no “ongoing” animal-wounding programs and “do[es] not have any studies related to wounding cats or dogs.”

So PETA Senior Project Manager Carla Gunn, a disabled combat veteran, issued a statement in response

Neither Gen. George Patton nor President Franklin Roosevelt would have tolerated such a misleading statement by the U.S. Army about its recent use of animals in weapon wounding tests, and neither will PETA. Like them, we will continue to fight and win—for the animals who are as defenseless as any downtrodden population. It’s misleading for the Army to give the impression that such weapon wounding tests on animals are not “ongoing” without further clarification—in fact, such testing by the Army has recently occurred, as it confirmed the existence of at least one “classified” protocol of such testing. The bottom line is that the Army’s current policy reverses precedent by allowing for the use of weapons to wound dogs, cats, primates, and marine mammals in gruesome tests, and this abhorrent absurdity needs to be permanently banned.

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 6.5 million members and supporters. PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: in laboratories, in the food industry, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of rodents, birds, and other animals who are often considered “pests” as well as cruelty to domesticated animals. PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.

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