In the Doghouse

Protest halts animal killings

For years the Pentagon has quietly conducted "wound care" experiments on live animals at four laboratories around the country to help train doctors for combat duty. A fifth such center was to open next month at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. Called the Wound Laboratory, the $70,000, 50-ft.-long firing range would have received 75 pigs for its initial experiments and, thereafter, up to 80 dogs a year. The plan: to anesthetize or restrain the animals, shoot them in the hind legs, and then let 150 military doctors treat the wounds. Once treated, the animals would have been killed. But news of the lab's plans triggered a weeklong public relations nightmare for the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, and effectively shut down the lab before it opened.

California Democrat Tom Lantos, along with fellow Democrats Thomas Foglietta of Pennsylvania and Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, circulated a petition on Capitol Hill protesting the experiments as a "shocking waste of animal lives and taxpayer monies." A Washington radio station repeatedly broadcast Weinberger's office phone number so that listeners could call up to complain. After reading about the lab in his morning newspaper, Weinberger, who owns a male collie named Kilty, issued a terse one-line statement banning all Department of Defense dog shootings. Next a presumably weary Weinberger ordered a broad review of the Pentagon's use of animals in medical research and directed that no animals could be used for wound research until the study was completed.

Had the wound laboratory opened as scheduled, it might also have become a target of critics of Government waste: Defense Department researchers were planning to pay licensed dealers $80 to $130 for each doomed dog, instead of buying unclaimed dogs from humane societies--which would have put them to death anyway--for as little as $3 to $ 10 a head. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.